 | The Breed |
Rating: |  out of  |
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Directed by: | Michael Oblowitz |
Cast: | Adrian Paul | Aaron Gray |
| Bokeem Woodbine | Steve Grant |
| Bai Ling | Lucy Westenra |
Writing Credits: | Christos N. Gage |
| Ruth C. Fletcher |
Stunt Coordinator: | Gyory Kives |
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DVD: | From any major US retailer. |
Zone: | 1 |
Video Signal: | NTSC |
| Adrian Paul as an immortal? A no brainer. Of course, I had to see this vampire movie. It was not what I expected. |
| The movie opens with NSA agents Steve Grant and his partner tracking down a serial killer to his lair. The killer has been kidnapping young women and exsanguinating them. There is a meleé and Grant's partner is killed. We only see enough of the murderer to get a general impression of Count Orlockiness (bald, long scary nose). |
| The next day, at HQ, Grant learns that 4,000 vampires revealed themselves to the government but it's OK, they drink artificial blood, now. It is suspected that the serial killer is a rogue vampire with a taste for the real thing. For this reason, Grant's new partner is the chief of the vampire police, Aaron Gray. |
| What Gray doesn't know is the feds have a fatal virus tailored to vampires and if the case isn't solved to their satisfaction, they're willing to use it. |
| Meanwhile, Grant is falling for vampire hotty Lucy. |
| The Breed is not an action movie. It is a mystery, buddy flick. Maybe it is science fiction because it takes place in some alternate universe where the USA seems to be a totalitarian state, stuck in the '50s. The vampires have super strength and immortality but, in the main, they resemble refugees instead of ubermensch. They are people, not monsters. |
| The production design is stunningly grim. Shot on location, with Budapest filling in for New York, almost every scene eloquently portrays a downtrodden, gray world. Steve Grant uses a car phone and it has a cord to the receiver in the car. No cell phones here! At NSA HQ periodic announcements tell us "Informing on your enemy makes him your friend." |
| While the writing does not compete with "Buffy", I was kept guessing about the identity of the rogue and, as it turned out, I hadn't a clue about his motivations. This is a movie that doesn't go for the obvious and in our modern day of focus groups and audience testing, that's a good thing. |
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