Painkiller Jane

While this is clearly not in the same league as the usual SciFi Saturday night godawful piece o'junk, with much better production values (not Bulgaria? sonofagun!) and decent acting, the story itself was a complete snore. Not an original concept in the whole thing and it just dragged on for two hours without anything really happening. Yeah, she's cute, yeah, she looks nice in leather, but Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Ooops, sorry, dozed off.

I spent two hours waiting for something, anything, to happen. Oooh, goodie, a shootout. Now there's an original concept, and certainly one worth waiting for. And, ooooh, the suspense is killing me. Is she really dead? If this was a pilot, I'm not too curious about the show. If it wasn't a pilot, there's no excuse for the utter lack of story.

This is an OK film as long as you aren't expecting much, definitely leave your brain at the door.

The plot is nothing new, no original thought here. The acting is actually quite good although it's sometimes hard to judge the acting when the dialogue is this bad.

The main problem is that all the "surprises" are obvious, you won't be surprised by anything in this film, the plot twists can be see long before they arrive and they have all been used elsewhere.

The plot is also a bit nonsensical with characters behaviour, the villains in particular, not being believable.

The directing is terrible with annoying visual effects thrown in for no real reason.

All that said this is watchable trash if you are looking to kill a bit of time.

Reasonable plot, sufficient suspense and misdirection. The premise is believable in a science fiction way. There are no fake monsters. There are no incredibly stupid moves by the heroine ineptly designed to create artificial tension, an amateurish plot technique that seems to be rampant even in network (e.g., "24") programs. Good role for great old Richard (Shaft) Roundtree. No really awful acting. Attractive heroine. There were no parts that were so slow or boring that I skipped ahead, and I would watch this again in a year or so. It is head and shoulders above most Sci Fi Channel fare. Clearly, I was pretty impressed.

No, it's not Emmy caliber, but it is so much better than expected, I really can't understand what "ambrazos" is whining about in his review.

It could have been worse. The plot was realistic and reasonable but need more factual details to be more convincing. There are a lot of interesting characters but the lacking of their background stories make them feeled more like props. The direction was foggy. It seemed like the director let the audience fill in the blanks. There seemed to be a lot more of the story to tell but it was left out, trying to fit the whole stories into the movie. This should have been a ten-hour mini-series or a series.

There were no romance or sexual tension (from what I got) and that was the good part of the film. I also like the superhero(ine) that has enough weakness to make her feel like a human. I probably like Jane more than Superman, Batman or even Laura Croft.

The soundtrack was lovely, it could be the best part of the film. The worst part would be the Vaugier's hair. What were they thinking.

After watching a few episodes of the recent TV series, I expected the worst. However, this movie (the original) was surprisingly different and better. All the actors are different and the plot is actually interesting.

Basically, the story is about a female soldier who has an unexpected reaction to a chemical agent. She gains regenerative and some sort of perceptual power. The military wants to seclude, study and use her ... but she's more interested in finding out what and who is responsible for what happened to her.

The film is reasonably well acted and the plot is interesting. Her quest to find a diabolical foreign scientist who is as surprised at her situation as she is ... is interesting. Plus, he's not quite as far away as one might think.

If you're looking to pass time with a semi-decent "made-for-TV", B-level sci-fi movie, this might work for you.