‘Novocaine’ Review: Can You Feel the Pain

We’re used to heroes who can take a licking and carry on ticking, however Novocaine takes action-movie invulnerability to brutal comedian extremes. Starring Jack Quaid as a timid not-quite-everyman on the path of the financial institution robbers who kidnapped his would-be girlfriend, the movie presents little novelty past its hero being a human pin cushion, nevertheless it’s full of sufficient artistic violence to make even jaded motion followers squirm of their seats.

Nathan Caine (Quaid) can’t really feel ache. Born with a uncommon genetic dysfunction, the mild-mannered financial institution staffer lives a lifetime of cautious risk-aversion: His bathe knob has a stopper to maintain the water temperature under scalding, his condo’s sharp corners are buffered with break up tennis balls, and he completely consumes a liquid weight loss program lest he chew off his personal tongue with out realizing it.

Nathan begins to return out of his shell (and style strong meals!) when a co-worker, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), invitations him out for a day slice of pie and, later, to her artwork present. However the courting part of their relationship is over virtually as quickly because it begins when crooks wearing Santa Claus costumes maintain up their financial institution and kidnap Sherry, main Nathan on a rescue mission that can check the bodily limits of a physique that’s held him again for thus lengthy.

Written by Lars Jacobson and co-directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, Novocaine may at first blush be mistaken for a unusual indie rom-com, with Nathan as the barely hapless string bean of a pleasant man who’d moderately play video video games than discuss to ladies and Sherry as the fetching new rent who helps pull him out of his consolation zone regardless of his protestations. Quaid and Midthunder’s chemistry is strong, however their romance is simply marginally much less paint-by-numbers than the search-and-rescue plot that kicks into excessive gear in the movie’s second act. Fortunately, Novocaine is aware of the right way to ship on its hook even when the dramatics go limp.

Quaid conducts himself like a bona fide motion star in tightly choreographed, close-quarters fight situations as schtick-y as they’re wince-inducing. From Nathan dusting his bloodied, break up knuckles with shards of damaged glass for max ache potential, to taking an arrow by the knee earlier than adducting the level of the arrow into the temple of an assailant, the movie has a blast concocting over-the-top methods for our slender hero to make use of his distinctive situation to significantly fuck up anybody who crosses his path, and whereas wrecking his personal physique in the course of.

Naturally, it splinters credulity that Nathan may survive the metric ton of trauma that his physique is compelled to soak up. Nevertheless it’s onerous to care given delirium with which the filmmakers fling him by the proverbial ringer, as if making an attempt to find out how lengthy can carry on swinging.

It’s a pity, then, that Novocaine struggles to make all the bloodshed imply one thing, particularly on condition that the twists and turns really feel copy-pasted from different beat ‘em ups and police procedurals. The largest victims of this artistic dearth are Matt Walsh and Betty Gabriel as third-rate police detectives left to chew over hoary one-liners whereas the remainder of the forged has their enjoyable.

Ray Nicholson throws as a lot weight as he can into the movie’s big-bad position and offers even higher than he will get in a climactic slobberknocker with Quaid, whereas Jacob Batalon is featured in the form of sidekick position that he can do together with his fingers tied. Midthunder, the breakout star of Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, will get some licks in when the wheels of plot lastly ask it of her, nevertheless it looks like an actual miss to go away the woman who decapitated Predator and wore his inexperienced blood marooned in a dingy warehouse for the majority of the movie’s runtime.

Novocaine doesn’t fairly really feel like the start of a brand new field workplace motion hero, however Nathan Caine is the sort of character who may need a number of sequels in him. Although the movie struggles to seek out freshness past its artistic strategy to bodily harm, there’s a candy message at the core of it about embracing what makes you unusual to find how way more it’s important to provide. If we get one other go-round with the character, Berk and Olsen would do effectively to lean into the bizarre.