Painkiller Jane (2005) TV movie

 

Starring Emanuelle Vaugier, Eric Dane, Richard Roundtree, Callum Keith Rennie and Tate Donovan. Directed by Sanford Bookstaver.

(How awesome is the poster above?  Nothing like that happens in the film)

I’ve been on a bit of an Event Comics/Painkiller Jane kick of late and I discovered there were 2 attempts to make a Painkiller Jane show.  This 2005 TV movie/pilot and a 2007 one season TV series.

I’ve said before that in a sense adaptations almost need to be reviewed at least twice, once in comparison to the source materials and once as itself.

In a lot of ways this puts me in mind of the 1944 Captain America serial – we have a guy called Captain America in a reasonable version of the suit and that’s about all that came across from the comics. This adaptation has a woman named Jane who heals quickly and that seems to be all that came over.

In the comics Jane Vasco was an undercover cop who had her cover blown and pumped full of untested synthetic drugs. She goes into a two year coma and wakes up with rapid healing powers.  Her former partner now gives her cases that sit outside the law.  In earlier Adventures she is covered in bandages, which is a cool look. 

Here our heroine is Jane Browning, an Army Captain in the Painkiller Unit. The unit is in Chechnya shutting down what they think is a drug lab.  The team start to bleed from their eyes (never a good thing) and men in biohazard suits shoot them.  Jane is the only survivor and she has a heightened metabolism and heals quickly.  She also has enhanced intelligence but doesn’t seem to come into play as much. 

Colonel Watts (Roundtree) tells Jane that they stumbled onto the lab of evil scientist and bioweapons manufacturer, Peter Erfan, a man so mysterious that they only have one photo of him at age 6 in an orphanage. 

Intel suggested that our scientist is trying to enhance human beings but until now it only burns subjects out eventually killing them. Until Jane that is.  The Secretary of Defence, Donnie Mitchell, wants her to be studied.

Jane is about be put into protective custody in Alaska, but determined to find Erfan and with a little encouragement from Dr Knight, she escapes custody.  Where she basically kidnaps Nick Pierce, a thief forcing him to outrun the military on his motorcycle.

Jane is shot so Nick takes her back to his house, where she recovers from her wound, her body forcibly ejecting the bullet.  Jane meets the rest of Nick’s crew - Blue, a medic and Squeak, young man who know every tunnel in the city.

There’s some skullduggery, Jane discovers that the man she thinks is Dr Knight is not Dr Knight and he tells her he is Captain Lucas Insley, military intelligence investigating Colonel Watts, believing that Watts has created Irfan as a cover for Watt’s own experiments.

Not knowing who to trust Jane brings in her sister (who does not appear in the comics) and calls on Nick and his crew.

We discover who the real Peter Erfan is, and he is able to recreate the virus that created Jane.  I won’t say who it is in case you want to watch the movie yourself on Youtube.

The story ends with Jane reported dead and given a new identity by Watts looking closer to her comic book counterpart.  We aren’t told the new identity but I like to think it is Jane Vasco.

Erfan believed to be dead, but a final coda shows him alive.

I presume had this gone to series, Watts would have given her missions to chase Erfans and battle his enhanced soldiers, likely working with Nick and his crew.

As an adaptation, this isn’t particularly faithful but does a reasonable job with the action on a TV movie budget.  It’s an ok set up, I suspect the series may have been closer to the comics or at least tried.  I liked Eric Dane’s Nick Pierce, I would have been on board for more of him, a roguish thief who helps Jane because it is the right thing.

Now this has me curious to see what was changed for the short lived series 2 years later.

I presume that this led to the 2006 Painkiller Jane comic miniseries from Dynamite comics.