The Breed

If The Breed is any indication our future looks pretty bleak. Originally released as a made for cable movie The Breed is now available on DVD. It's a story set in the "near future", a future where a totalitarian new world order style government controls the world. A world that has just awakened to the presence of a new species, the vampires.

Detective Steve Grant (Bokeem Woodbine) and his partner are working a routine case to find a stolen van and it's female driver. When they find her tied to the ceiling drained of blood and the killer laughing maniacally they move in for the arrest. They soon find out this is no ordinary killer. He has superhuman strength, isn't harmed by bullets, and can crawl up vertical walls like a fly. Only Grant narrowly survives the encounter. He reports to his superiors fully expecting not to be believed. To his surprise they know all about what the criminal is, a vampire. For more than a year the government has had a secret truce with the vampires and they are about to go public.  Grant is forced to team up with a vampire cop, Aaron Gray (Adrian Paul) to find the vampire serial murderer who is threatening to destabilize the fragile peace between humans and vampires.

As the body count rises their investigation leads them to Lucy Westenra (Bai Ling), a mysterious femme fatale with a penchant for club life. Grant and Westenra are soon drawn together in a torrid cross species affair that could jeopardize their investigation. The case becomes more complex as political motives for the murders becomes evident. Certain vampire factions are opposed to peace with humans. Are they trying to destroy the peace?

The government, fearful of what may happen if the peace collapses, develops a virus that will give humans a mild cold but is deadly to vampires. The race is on to find the serial killer and determine the true intentions of the vampires.

The Breed is a confused film as so many made for TV movies are. It's a cross between Brazil, The Matrix, and X-men with imagery reminiscent of some Warsaw Pact dictatorship combined with goth clubs and Nazi film reels. It can't decide if it wants to be a treatise against Nazi aggression or the new world order or the story of compassion and love between two people in disparate worlds. Confused it is but it somehow works, if just barely. 

Just when the film is on the verge of taking itself too seriously they throw in my favorite scene. This is when Grant, Gray, and Westenra visit Pravda, a vampire dance club.

I find it difficult to fault the over dramatized if not preachy portions of the film when they are willing to poke fun at themselves like this. While not a great film The Breed is worthy of renting.

The DVD special features include:

• Full and Widescreen presentations
• Director and Adrian Paul commentary
• English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai subtitles
• Filmographies

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