We’re used to heroes who can take a licking and keep on ticking, but Novocaine takes action-movie invulnerability to brutal comic extremes. Starring Jack Quaid as a timid not-quite-everyman on the trail of the bank robbers who kidnapped his would-be girlfriend, the film offers little novelty beyond its hero being a human pin cushion, but it’s stuffed with enough creative violence to make even jaded action fans squirm in their seats.
Nathan Caine (Quaid) can’t feel pain. Born with a rare genetic disorder, the mild-mannered bank staffer lives a life of careful risk-aversion: His shower knob has a stopper to keep the water temperature below scalding, his apartment’s sharp corners are buffered with split tennis balls, and he exclusively consumes a liquid diet lest he chew off his own tongue without realizing it.
Nathan starts to come out of his shell (and taste solid foods!) when a co-worker, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), invites him out for an afternoon slice of pie and, later, to her art show. But the courting phase of their relationship is over almost as soon as it starts when crooks dressed in Santa Claus costumes hold up their bank and kidnap Sherry, leading Nathan on a rescue mission that will test the physical limits of a body that’s held him back for so long.
Written by Lars Jacobson and co-directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, Novocaine could at first blush be mistaken for a quirky indie rom-com, with Nathan as the slightly hapless string bean of a nice guy who’d rather play video games than talk to girls and Sherry as the fetching new hire who helps pull him out of his comfort zone despite his protestations. Quaid and Midthunder’s chemistry is solid, but their romance is only marginally less paint-by-numbers than the search-and-rescue plot that kicks into high gear in the film’s second act. Luckily, Novocaine knows how to deliver on its hook even when the dramatics go limp.
Quaid conducts himself like a bona fide action star in tightly choreographed, close-quarters combat scenarios as schtick-y as they are wince-inducing. From Nathan dusting his bloodied, split knuckles with shards of broken glass for maximum pain potential, to taking an arrow through the knee before adducting the point of the arrow into the temple of an assailant, the film has a blast concocting over-the-top ways for our slender hero to use his unique condition to seriously fuck up anyone who crosses his path, and while wrecking his own body in the process.
Naturally, it splinters credulity that Nathan could survive the metric ton of trauma that his body is forced to absorb. But it’s hard to care given delirium with which the filmmakers fling him through the proverbial ringer, as if trying to determine how long can keep on swinging.
It’s a pity, then, that Novocaine struggles to make all the bloodshed mean something, especially given that the twists and turns feel copy-pasted from other beat ‘em ups and police procedurals. The biggest victims of this creative dearth are Matt Walsh and Betty Gabriel as third-rate police detectives left to chew over hoary one-liners while the rest of the cast has their fun.
Ray Nicholson throws as much weight as he can into the film’s big-bad role and gives even better than he gets in a climactic slobberknocker with Quaid, while Jacob Batalon is featured in the sort of sidekick role that he can do with his hands tied. Midthunder, the breakout star of Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, gets some licks in when the wheels of plot finally ask it of her, but it feels like a real miss to leave the girl who decapitated Predator and wore his green blood marooned in a dingy warehouse for the majority of the film’s runtime.
Novocaine doesn’t quite feel like the birth of a new box office action hero, but Nathan Caine is the type of character who might have a few sequels in him. Though the film struggles to find freshness beyond its creative approach to bodily injury, there’s a sweet message at the core of it about embracing what makes you strange to discover how much more you have to offer. If we get another go-round with the character, Berk and Olsen would do well to lean into the weird.
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