Novo­caine review – no pain, no gain

Mild-man­nered bank work­er and gam­ing enthu­si­ast Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) has spent his whole life avoid­ing poten­tial injury. It’s not that he’s hyper­sen­si­tive – in fact, Nathan has the oppo­site prob­lem, born with Con­gen­i­tal Insen­si­tiv­i­ty to Pain and Anhy­dro­sis (CIPA) which means, as one might gath­er from the name of the con­di­tion, his ner­vous sys­tem doesn’t reg­is­ter any response to injury. This means even every day tasks like eat­ing pose a risk (he could chew through his tongue with­out real­is­ing) and he’s led a cease­less­ly cau­tious life as a result – until he devel­ops a crush on co-work­er Sher­ry (Amber Midthun­der) who intro­duces him to cher­ry pie and first-date sex­u­al encounters.

Nathan’s new lease on life (and blos­som­ing roman­tic rela­tion­ship) are rude­ly inter­rupt­ed when a group of bank rob­bers dressed as San­ta burst into the cred­it union where he works as an assis­tant man­ag­er and demand access to the vault. With Sher­ry tak­en hostage, Nathan decides to do some­thing wild­ly out of char­ac­ter and get her back despite the great risk to his own well­be­ing. As it turns out, his inabil­i­ty to feel pain makes Nathan just the right man to go toe-to-toe with a trio of vio­lent goons, mak­ing him decid­ed­ly more gung ho about his res­cue mis­sion than any­one who knows how it feels to get shot.

Quaid is well cast as the gawky every­man, hav­ing appar­ent­ly attend­ed the same charm school as his moth­er (Meg Ryan). The role might not be that far removed from his per­for­mance in Prime TV’s The Boys, but he does a lot with a lit­tle, game­ly bring­ing to life this scrap­py under­dog. His rap­port with Midthun­der is enough to root for even if her char­ac­ter is a hodge­podge of quirky girl clichés, and the strange blend of gory action-thriller and roman­tic com­e­dy works sur­pris­ing­ly well. It’s cer­tain­ly not for the faint of heart though, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re sen­si­tive to snapped bones or hands dipped in deep fat friers. The plot fal­ters by reveal­ing its hand too soon, and divid­ing the action between Nate and the rob­bers-slash-kid­nap­pers in a way that cre­ates a lag­ging sensation.

There’s also lit­tle explo­ration of CIPA – very much a real con­di­tion – beyond the comedic poten­tial it presents, which feels like a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty to widen under­stand­ing (though grant­ed per­haps the writ­ers didn’t feel equipped to do so in a film already strad­dling at least three gen­res). We are offered lit­tle insight into Nathan’s life pri­or to Sher­ry beyond vague stereo­types about him being a friend­less los­er, and the addi­tion of Jacob Bat­alon at his vir­tu­al BFF (play­ing essen­tial­ly the same quip­py com­ic relief char­ac­ter he plays in the Spi­der-Man films) does lit­tle to shift the nee­dle on that. In fact, beyond the cre­ative stunt chore­og­ra­phy, Novo­caine doesn’t leave much of an impres­sion full stop, and its sac­cha­rine end­ing rel­e­gates it to a cat­e­go­ry of films with intrigu­ing premis­es that end up ulti­mate­ly forgettable.