Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

david-beukes In fairness, I didn't get beyond the fourth episode before my brain went into a self-induced coma to protect itself. The show may have subsequently improved, but I am simply not bored enough to find out.I don't really want to single out actors as a reason why this show exerts such cosmic suction, mostly because the technical department are more to blame than they are. Also actors are typically following direction and working from scripts.Which brings me to my next point. I really wish that this type of show would be called "Has the same name as a comic book" rather than "Based on a comic book." It might get far less negative reviews if it attempted to gain its own audience rather than grabbing for a ready-made audience who are only going to shoot it down if it isn't instantly brilliant.

liquidcelluloid-1 Network: Sci-Fi; Genre: Action, Mystery, Sci-Fi; Content Rating: TV-PG (violence, language); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1-4);Season Reviewed: season 1 Of all the show's I've watched this year so far, few are quite as punishing as "Painkiller Jane". To call it a "mess" or "sloppy" would not begin to do it justice.Jane Vasko (Kristanna Loken) is an agent for a secret crime fighting agency that hunts "Neuros" – defined by Jane in the opening as "people who can do strange things with their mind". A Neuro is basically a catch-all that allows the show to do anything it wants. The show trots in villains who can see the future, can start fires, are banshees, machine controlling killers and, hell, maybe even ghosts. There are no set rules or consistent behavior to the Neuros, or if there are the show plays pretty fast and loose with them. The Sci-fi Channel should know one thing, if anything about their base: that sci-fi fans love keeping up with the rules of a new world.Led by this complete lack of focus with the Neuros, the show slips and slides all over the road trying to plug itself into every genre and sci-fi story it can think of - possibly in the name of versatility, possibly because it has no personality of it's own. When a show can pull this off successfully you've got some wildly inventive TV heaven, but when it can't you've got a mess. A show without a backbone or its own original voice.The superhero catch: Jane has an ability herself. She can heal, quickly, from anything. Even a fatal fall or a hit from a train. The show doesn't have the budget that, say, NBC's "Heroes" does (which includes a character with the exact same power) to allow us to really see Jane's bone-crunching skills in action. So most of the "stunts" are pieced together from a series of confusing shots leaving the viewer to decipher what the hell just happened and squashing any potential thrill or intensity from the show. The fundamental flaw with "Jane" is that while this may be based on a comic book of the same name, from Wolverine to Clair Bennett we've seen this ability ad nauseum and it is a hard thing to get excited about anymore.On top of it all, Loken plays Jane as deadpan and emotionally cold as her cyborg villain in "Terminator 3". The woman either cannot act at all or somebody forgot to tell her than Jane should have emotions. But Loken is a gorgeous woman playing to a sci-fi crowd and the show makes the mistake of treating her like one of the boys. Knowing how silly it was and who it was playing to "Dark Angel" had the foresight to put Jessica Alba in skimpy clothes and have her go into heat every time sweeps rolled around. "Jane" has our main character covered up, trapped in a boring love life and musing over narration about how you never really know somebody… or something equally basic. It is as if the show is on a mission to keep her as sexless and dull as possible on every level. Will she get together with the bald emotionally distant jerk on the team? Even that might help. Come on, let's give the internet something to talk about.If it didn't look like garbage or was written with one inane, confounding line following another, everything in "Jane" from the characters to the show's world is half (or never) explored or explained. For to do that might require the show to think something out or express itself in a voice that is something other than cheap, manufactured, assembly line stories. Could Jane be a Neuro herself? If not that would be quite a coincidence. I'm sure answers will come, but I for one, won't be sticking around any more to get them.If any promise was made by "Eureka" to trend the Sci-Fi Channel out of its non-stop output of trash, "Painkiller Jane" reverses that with a vengeance.½ / 4

brocious PKJ is a great show. Though the pilot was bad, it's gotten extremely better. I'm really wondering if the people giving it a bad review are watching the same show. Granted, if the acting and writing would've stayed the same as the pilot, I would've said the same thing about PKJ. But, as the characters developed and the acting got better and we've gotten to know these characters, it's turned completely around. I look forward to this show every week. Kritanna Lokken has completely gotten into her character and is doing a great job. People probably saw the pilot and thought the rest of the episodes weren't worth watching. I wasn't impressed with the pilot; but, thought it had to get better. And, it did! It fits well with the rest of the SCI-FI programs. I hope it has a very long run! PKJ deserves it!

Liberty Pratt It's become a habit at this point for SciFi Channel to produce awful shows.Even with the great Eureka making the sole exception, one at this point equated SciFi Series with poor film-making and acting.Painkiller Jane does not disappoint those low expectations.Kristana Loken is the best actress of a group of actors that must have been cast from Amateur Hour at the local theater, which is to say that she rises to the level of being merely inadequate and uninspired.Worse, the "filmmaking" is up (or is it down) to SciFi's exceedingly low standards set by the awful Battlestar Galacitica (aka Shakystar Crapotica for those in the know). The camera just shakes meaninglessly for an hour in what apparently passes for direction with SciFi Channel executives.The photography is really awful and not something you'd want to see again.Overall, another must-miss for a channel that is has been wasting precious resources in badly-made shows nobody wants to see for the past few years.Very sad.