by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTORS: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
CAST: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Certified Fresh
PLOT: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.
Just when I thought the John Wick franchise had shown me everything there was to see in terms of modern action films, along comes Novocaine. If there are philosophical rumblings at the heart of the screenplay, I didn’t see them. There is a brief scene where a character says probably the deepest line in the film, something along the lines of, “We all have something to hide. Maybe we’re just looking for someone to show it to.” Apart from that, though, this movie is a machine designed for one thing: thrill you and make you laugh and cringe all at the same time. That’s three things, but you get the point.
Because this machine has only one purpose, any criticisms accusing it of not doing something it wasn’t designed for are moot. You don’t eat a cheeseburger and then complain it didn’t taste like chateaubriand. I got what the movie’s goals were after 10-15 minutes – or, actually, even after just watching the red-band trailers. I went in with eyes wide open, and I was not disappointed. My only real complaint is that those same trailers gave away a little too much of the very best fight scenes in the film, ruining two of the best gags (the deep fryer and the ball-and-chain). But I forgive the trailer editors because the rest of the movie was so freaking entertaining.
Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, whose father’s famous smile will haunt his face for the rest of his life) is an assistant bank manager living with a very real genetic disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or CIP. He literally cannot feel pain, to the degree that he can’t even chew solid food because he could theoretically chew off bits of his tongue and not realize it. His obligatory meet-cute with the love interest, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), involves him spilling scalding hot coffee on his hands, but of course he doesn’t feel a thing. One thing leads to another, and they spend the night together. Apparently, Nate can’t feel pain, but pleasure is another story. (I thought that scene might include a homage to Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis’s love scene in Some Like It Hot [1959], but alas.)
Next day, as is revealed in the trailers, three robbers dressed as Santa Claus rob his bank, kill his boss, and take Sherry hostage. On impulse, he takes off after them in a stolen police car, which of course leads authorities to believe he’s in on the case. This also leads to the first of several jaw-dropping fight scenes, not because they’re insanely choreographed like a Jackie Chan movie, but because the physical violence shown on screen goes beyond anything I can remember seeing before in a fight scene. Maybe Oldboy (2003) comes close.
Fair warning: if you are squeamish, this movie is simply not for you. Just in the first fight scene alone, we see Nate get kicked, punched, seared by a scalding hot frying pan, and burned horrifically, which results in him wearing a bandage (and a disturbingly realistic prosthetic) on his hand for the rest of the movie. The comedy comes from equal parts watching as Nate gets injured and simply powers through it, and from cringing and cursing and covering your face as those injuries occur.
I won’t give anything else away. The movie does include an intriguing story development that I did not see coming. My fellow Cinemaniac, Anthony, also made an interesting observation. It was unusual to see a clearly comic film featuring so many actual deaths: multiple cops murdered after the bank robbery, a death inside the bank itself, and the body count keeps adding up as Nate gets closer and closer to rescuing Sherry. Nate himself contributes (minimally) to the body count, but it’s mostly the bad guys killing anyone who gets in their way. Is it possibly to balance almost slapstick physical comedy with so many, almost gratuitous deaths?
For myself, I didn’t think so. I look at a movie like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), with umpteen deaths, but it’s a movie that’s clearly having fun with the kung-fu genre, which requires lots of death. Novocaine felt to me like a riff on the John Wick movies. John Wick mows through LEGIONS of bad guys, getting punched and shot and sometimes falling from four-story buildings onto vans and just getting up, brushing himself off, and moving to the next fight scene. Nathan Caine does the same thing, just not with legions of bad guys, but you’re constantly aware that he could be killed at any minute. That kept the stakes raised, so I didn’t feel like I was watching a video game come to life.
Novocaine might be the most fun I’ve had at the movies in 2025 so far. I laughed a lot, I CRINGED a lot (usually while I was laughing), and uttered more curse words at the screen than I have in a long time (usually “JEEEsus!” or “Oh SHIT”). The story doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel, but the execution is superb. Just to restate my warning from earlier: if you don’t like graphic onscreen violence, stay away. Everyone else, enjoy!
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 