The concept of having an action movie featuring a lead character who can feel no pain (thanks to a genetic condition) has a great deal of potential, especially when said lead isn’t a muscle-bound hero type, but instead, a charmingly normal guy named Nate, played by Jack Quaid (recently doing terrific work in Companion). Nate's only real mission in Novocaine is to win over Sherry (Amber Midthunder, Prey, The Ice Road), a young woman he has a crush on, who also works at the bank where he is a manager.
Because of his condition (congenital insensitivity to pain analgesia—a real affliction), Nate lives a careful, secluded life. He’s fully baby-proofed his house; he only eats soft foods because he’s afraid he’ll bite part of his tongue off and not realize it; and he mostly stays inside after work and plays video games with his online pal Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), whom he’s never met in person. But when he starts to develop feelings for Sherry, Nate starts to get brave and dares to try things that might result in actual injury, like going out of doors for fun.
But shortly after their first date, their bank branch is robbed and Sherry is taken hostage, inspiring Nate to put aside all fear and sense of self-preservation to rescue her from the clutches of the particularly nasty ringleader, Simon (Ray Nicholson). In the process, perhaps not surprisingly, Nate gets banged up a little bit—stabbed, punched, broken in many places—and while it’s clear he needs a hospital visit to assess the actual damage, he powers through to save his first-ever potential love interest.
Directors Dan Berk & Robert Olsen (Significant Other, Villains), working from a screenplay by Lars Jacobson, haven’t quite worked out all of the ramifications of having their central character getting continuously battered for the duration of the film (blood loss would become a factor at some point, I would think), but that doesn’t stop Novocaine from being funny and entertaining more often that not. Quaid is a gift to this production; he oozes charisma and a certain naivety that is perfect for Nate, who is prone to overlook certain flaws in Sherry that the rest of us pick up on sooner. But Sherry is a complicated character, and Midthunder plays her with just the right balance of allure and sketchiness.
Although the film isn’t exceedingly graphic in terms of the violence, the filmmakers also don’t hold back on a fair amount of low-level gore. There are a few nicely staged fight sequences that might have you squirming when you start to consider how much things would hurt someone with functional nerve endings. What Novocaine is missing is motivation for Nate to immediately jump in to save Sherry; there are actual police in the film (Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh), who strongly encourage him to let them do their job. But if he did, we wouldn’t have a movie.
Still, there’s a booby-trapped house sequence that seems like a bloodier version of Home Alone (the film acknowledges the parallels), and it’s basically Nate walking through a torture chamber that he doesn’t feel, but he knows it’s causing some real damage. It’s actually a fun set piece, but in the end, you can’t help but say “That wouldn’t work.” I laughed, I cringed, and I vicariously winced in pain; I’m guessing the filmmakers’ goals encompassed all of that, so this is probably exactly the film they set out to make.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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