Novocaine (2025)

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an Diego Trust Credit Union Assistant Manager Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) is understandably uninterested in maintaining enthusiasm at work; it’s just not a fulfilling career. He’s nevertheless sympathetic to his customers, going out of his way to manipulate some data to prevent a foreclosure, for example, even though this will lose the company moneymaking opportunities. As a movie character, he’s a normal guy, an everyman with a decent moral compass.

However, he exists in an extremely fictional world – one in which a sardonic detective cracks jokes as if he were in “Airplane!” or where online buddies are willing to break the law and risk their wellbeing for someone they’ve never met – despite coincidentally living a mere 20 minutes away. Nate is also cursed – or blessed – with a unique disability designed entirely for the cinematic exploitation of this picture: he can’t feel pain. It would be utterly debilitating for a real person, who would likely die young from unpreventable injuries and infections and medical complications; but in this over-the-top realm, Nate is likened to a superhero. It’s mentioned that he spent most of his childhood in a hospital, and was relentlessly bullied in school, but his tragic upbringing is about to transform into an action-hero adulthood thanks to a bank robbery by three goons dressed in Santa Claus outfits, who just so happen to take as a hostage the cute teller (Amber Midthunder) whom Nate has a crush on.

It’s ill-advised, but he’ll do just about anything – and suffer all sorts of bodily harm – to rescue her, following a path not unlike those in “Taken” and “Crank” and “Death Wish,” but with a healthy dose of comedy thrown in. After all, who can’t laugh at the physical abuse he’ll weather when he can’t feel pain? As it turns out, this is a fine balancing act that “Novocaine” is unable to smoothly navigate, especially when Nate’s affliction is so poorly defined. Can he feel regular sensations? Can he feel various pressures? Can he feel exhaustion? Does he have allergic reactions (or swelling)? What exactly can he feel with his fingertips? In the context of the film, he can’t feel bladder pressure or the strength of his own bite (when chewing food), which seems to suggest that he doesn’t have much sense of feeling at all, weirdly conflicting with many of the visuals shown. With this degree of insensitivity, he’d probably constantly have leg injuries from not being able to feel the weight and rhythm of his own steps. All of these finer details aside, the movie instead wishes to dwell on the laughs of Nate getting mutilated by sharp objects or having his skin melt away from extreme heat, which pose no deterrence on the pursuit of his lady. Ultimately, the grisliness of his abrasions and lacerations isn’t terribly funny; when special makeup effects are so appallingly gruesome and the violence is so brutal, it’s difficult to readily chuckle at the traumas, even when it’s obvious that Nate apathetically dismisses them.

His character is essentially depicted solely by the boundaries and limitations of his genetic disorder, which means that his existence is largely isolated, having no real social routines, no girlfriend or wife, and never connecting with friends outside of video games – yet another trope for a dweeb who will be called upon to rise up to the level of a larger-than-life antihero. The whirlwind romance with his underling attempts to dabble in the notion that two damaged outsiders can find shared values, but even this aspect is soon abandoned for the sake of a couple of striking twists and spontaneous bloodshed. In many ways, “Novocaine” would have worked better with greater realism, which is, of course, a lot to ask for in a project with a one-note gimmick as its premise. Yet like with cursing, which can often be overused in movies to the point that it no longer serves a purpose (think about how shocking it is when a character gets to spout the one and only hard expletive in a PG-13 environment), the violence here (including impromptu surgeries) frequently gets so extreme that it starts to lose its potency. In a setting where pain is supposed to be meaningfully significant – or where the absence of pain is supposed to be awe-inspiring – it becomes trivial the more it’s highlighted and focused upon in repugnant redundancies.

In the action department, a handful of stunts are amusing, but this is much more of a mystery (at least for the leading role) than a thriller. And when it comes to high-octane adventures, it’s never insignificant who the villains are, yet “Novocaine” opts for generic brutes who are just skilled enough in hand-to-hand combat – or are just brawny enough in size – that Nate must employ an unnatural amount of luck to avoid being savagely murdered by the first couple of punches or the first few swipes of an edged weapon. Confrontations grow ever more fortuitous with last-second saves to avoid having main characters simply gunned down before they have an opportunity to wisecrack. Likewise, Nate’s injuries never seem to prevent him from carrying on as normal, despite his sloughed skin surely getting in the way of grabbing and gripping, or his mangled muscles surely failing to keep him upright, or his blood loss severely affecting consciousness – regardless of permanent nerve damage. Still, for a fantasy-like bit of escapism, it isn’t without its satisfactory moments.

– Mike Massie