Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

ClassyWas Excellent, smart action film.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

DSearch1 With a reasonable budget ($4mm, according to IMDb), atmospheric location shooting in Rumania, and an intriguing premise, The Breed should have been a gem of a vampire flick. Instead, it's a contest between screenwriters Gage and Fletcher's comic book dialogue and Bokeem Woodbine's unfathomably inept lead performance to see who can drive a stake through the heart of this mess first.On the positive side, Adrian Paul convinces as an impressively physical vampire detective. Unfortunately, Ling Bai has zero chemistry with Woodbine, although that's probably not her fault, as nobody seems to. Disappointingly, her beauty gets buried under enough mascara to embarrass Alice Cooper.Director Michael Oblowitz demonstrates a flair for tense shoot-outs. But each time he cranks up the suspense, it takes only a few words from the relentlessly unconvincing Woodbine to obliterate the mood and return the viewer to Square One. This becomes such a routine occurrence, one is torn between frustration and laughter.The screenwriters' insistence on sophomoric "in" references only serves to make matters worse. A doctor named Fleming talks of James Bond and Blofeld, and other characters are named (no kidding) Lucy Westernra, Cross, Orlock, Gray, Seward, and Bathory. If that isn't enough, f-bombs drop everywhere.Needless to say, writers are answerable to directors, directors report to producers, and actors sometimes insist on improvising. So it's hard to know who's to blame for the end result. But ultimately, as another reviewer correctly observed, The Breed can only be enjoyed for what it had the potential to be.

Paul Andrews The Breed starts sometime in '...The Near Future...' where homicide detective Steven Grant (Bokeem Woodbine) & his partner Phil (Reed Diamond) follow up a lead on a particularly nasty serial killer who's running around at the moment. The lead happens to be a stolen van which they find & in a nearby building discover yet another dead body. The mysterious killer is also there, he most definitely resists arrest & even though Grant repeatedly shoots him he kills Phil by biting his neck. Grant survives but the killer disappears into the night... The 'National Security Agency' contacts Grant about the incident, the agencies director says that what he, & Phil, were dealing with was a renegade Vampire. He carries on to inform Grant that there are about 4000 Vampires worldwide & they revealed themselves to 'us' to try & live in harmony together, he also says that Vampires are genetic mutations & feed on a synthetic substitute for blood. Grant is assigned a new partner, a Vampire named Aaron Gray (Adrian Paul) & they are told to work together to discover the identity of the serial killing Vampire who wants to sabotage the peace between the two races...This American Hungarian co-production was directed by Michael Oblowitz & is average at best. The script by Christos N. Gage & Ruth Fletcher is the real problem here. Too many things just didn't work for me, for a start could a high ranking scientist create a virus that has the potential to wipe out the entire human race without a SINGLE person questioning him or finding out? I mean the guy is even using the 'Nation Security Agency' laboratories for Christ's sake! Considering the Vampire race has been around for 1000's of years it seemed strange that there was only 4000 throughout the entire world & that they had never been noticed before. The central relationship between Grant the human & Gray the Vampire was clichéd & really cheesy, I mean at first they don't don't get on & seem mismatched but by the end they are best of friends & have saved each other's lives, we've seen it all before & done a lot better. The whole story is predictable & I can't believe it took Gray over half the film to figure out the painfully obvious. The whole concept just didn't work as far as I'm concerned & the film spent a good 30 minutes explaining it's own set of Vampire 'rules' as Grant would ask a question like how to kill a Vampire & Gray would tell him thus making sure we, the viewer that is, know as well. The breed also makes a few feeble attempts to say things about racism, trust & acceptance, you know all the clichéd things one would expect.Director Oblowitz thinks he's making a cross between The Matrix (1999), Lethal Weapon (1987) & Vampires (1998), well no-one told him that you need a budget to pull that off. He films the fight scenes with people 'flying' through the air plus shooting & reloading their guns in a 'cool' way but they come off as looking ridiculous. He films everything with bleached out colours & a greenish tint. As for the films supposed style, you need to do a bit more than tilt the camera, shine a few neon lights & have some mist swirling in every shot. The gore is none existent, one neck biting, a couple of slit throats, a few gunshot wounds & someone explodes CGI style at the end & it looks terrible.With a really low budget of about $400,000 it shows. The Breed has reasonable production values but it looks cheap throughout & you can tell it was shot in Europe, in this case Hungary. Even though it is meant to be set in the future the cars, clothes & the like suggest otherwise. I found the acting awful, whats with the gay moustache Paul? Woodbine gives a terrible performance & just wasn't right for the role at all. Ling Bai is quite sexy looking whenever she appears.I was disappointed by The Breed, it's one of those films that make a fantastic trailer when they show ALL the cool bits in the space of two & a half minutes set against some techno music. Unfortunately there's another eighty seven & a half minutes to sit through if you decide to watch it. Personally I didn't think much of it.

rhi_pest I found it to be very Kim Newman-esquire in its approach to vampirism. It was likable, despite the painfully wooden acting. The scenery and costumes were heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and the Dr. Strangelove/1984 atmosphere was incredibly cool. However I still have to wonder how the main girl vampire managed to run around with those whacking great collars on her...And exactly what the heating bill was on her Gothic Mansion (tm). And I did love the fact that they used Buda-Pesth as their setting...The club was also cool, and slightly more fetish-y than other vampire movies like Blade...The dynamic between vamp cop and meat cop was quite good, still the same people from opposite sides aiming for the same goal while not quite trusting each other thing, but it made for some passable character development. And did I mention the supersharp 40s-style suit that the vamp cop gets to wear? Like I said, the costumes were gorgeous and well put together. The dialogue was a scream, but I'm sure it wasn't meant to be. "Cut the Anne Rice act!" From the lips of a vampire girl who I'm sure I've seen in gaming books, in fact, most of the main vamp characters seem to be based in the Masquerade vamp-style, running from fetish cyberpunk to nosferatu. The random acts of vampire motion were misplaced too. Stopping during a chase and twitching madly may look cool, but most viewers are going to be wondering WTF is going on. And the actor vamp is just the funniest thing alive...Or not quite so, as the case may be. And the handgrenade made me laugh, but that may just be my sense of humour.

Elijah_Chandler Wait a minute... yes I do.The director of 'The Breed' has obviously seen Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' a few too many times and asked himself the question, "If 'Brazil' had been an ill-conceived tale about vampires in the near future, what would it be like?" Well, I'll tell ya, it'd be like 91 minutes of a Swedish whore kicking you in the groin, only not as satisfying. The dialogue was laced with gratuitous curse words and trite one-liners, and whoever edited this piece of crap should be shot. I have no real idea of exactly how the whole thing ended because I'm not really sure what happened during the first part of the film. With so many subplots your head begins to hurt and so much bad acting your head wants to explode this movie should only be viewed with large quantities of beer and at least two other people you can MST3K with. The only thing that made me not stab myself in the eye with a dirty soup spoon was this line: Evil Doctor Guy: "That's it, you are not James Bond, and I am not Blofeld. No more explanations!" Dude From Jason's Lyric: "I'm getting paid scale!" The cinematography was shaky at best and the acting was putrid. Also, what was with all the pseudo-1984 posters and PA announcements? The costumes were from the 50's, the cars were from the 60's, the music was from the 90's and I wish I were dead. This movie sucks.