Though hardly a cinematic tour de force, this enjoyable genre entry uses vampire mythology as a springboard to deconstruct the mechanics of cops-and-robbers buddy movies. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in film studies to see the relationship between a black human police detective and his white vampire sidekick as a comment on Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, and their ilk. Fortunately, the script, by Ruth C. Fletcher and Christos N. Gage, has enough other interesting ideas -- or at least interesting combinations of secondhand ideas -- to keep the flick from growing tiresome after this initial premise has been established. Long on retro-futurist atmosphere (it was shot in Budapest) and short on coherent plotting, The Breed does suffer somewhat from its tendency to throw these ideas at the wall to see which ones stick. But viewers sympathetic to the limits of the film's genre and budget will appreciate the valiant attempt to take the vampire mythos in new directions. And Bai Ling -- an actress known less for her resumé than for the attention-grabbing outfits that regularly land her in the Fashion Police pages of Us Weekly -- may be the most outré fanged seductress since Grace Jones strutted her stuff in Vamp.