PHOENIX (AZFamily) — No pain, no gain? Think again.

Synopsis

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) is a banking executive with an extraordinarily rare condition: congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), which is exactly what it sounds like. With his inability to feel pain giving him the nickname Novocaine, Nathan gets to really test the limits of his condition when his bank is robbed and his girlfriend Sherry (Amber Midthunder) is kidnapped by the thieves.

My thoughts

Aside from the talent themselves who are making the movie, there’s nothing that will get my butt into a movie theater seat quicker than an idea that’s simply too good to pass up. Novocaine is such a film, where all I needed to hear was, “Action movie where the protagonist can’t feel pain,” and I was sold. It’s such a novel concept that opens up a world of possibilities when you’re making an action movie, but it can also extend to other genres, possibly even working out better that way.

Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, with a screenplay by Lars Jacobson, Novocaine isn’t just an action movie, but a comedic one at that. This isn’t exactly the type of premise you can play completely straight, so some comedy is expected, but when it comes to integrating and balancing these two genres, this team of filmmakers was far more adept in one department over the other.

Push it to the limit

As a comedy movie, Novocaine works 100%. Jack Quaid is a hilarious lead, the dialogue is sharp, and there’s actually a lot of thought put into squeezing as much comedic juice as you can from this premise. As Nathan suffers horrific injury after horrific injury, you’ll be wincing and squirming, but also laughing at how nonchalantly he shrugs it all off. You think things just can’t get worse for Nathan, but to him, these injuries are nothing more than annoyances.

Even if there are loads of great slapstick visuals to show just how much pain Nathan doesn’t feel, the filmmakers treat the condition he has with earnest realism. In reality, people with CIP in real life don’t normally live that long since there’s no way for their body to tell them something is wrong. Normal life functions like eating solid food are something we take for granted when there are people like Nathan who can’t even enjoy a piece of pie lest he risk accidentally biting off his tongue.

As an action flick, Novocaine is completely serviceable, even if none of these sequences are anything to write home about. They all have this feeling of ending right when they’re about to take off, never quite reaching their full potential. The setup for each action scene to have all sorts of craziness is there, but it never quite reaches the heights you would expect. Nathan does wind up pretty banged up by the end of it all, but I was expecting far more creatively violent injuries.

The action is still mostly comprehensible due to the clear staging and editing, but like Heart Eyes, Novocaine is another tragic case of a modern movie being too dark and drab to get a solid visual sense of what’s happening at times. This could have been solved not just with better lighting, but clearer, more creative direction that takes advantage of its scenarios so we can really feel the oomph of every injury that comes Nathan’s way.

Back-breaking work

What the action scenes really have going for them is what the rest of the movie has going for it: Jack Quaid and the comedy. It’s a good thing his character in this can’t feel any pain because he’s completely carrying this movie on his back. He’s playing the typical insecure dweeb he often does, but unlike his other characters, Nathan is a decent person here with a good heart. Wimpy, unwilling action heroes have their place in the movies too, and Jack Quaid is the perfect actor who can embody that type of role.

Like his father and uncle, he has grit and charm but plenty of unhinged lunacy to go along with it. His physical acting is especially impressive, selling each punch and kick he takes with hilarious indifference. It puts a unique little twist on the action protagonist taking insane amounts of damage and, even better, makes it all somewhat believable! Experiencing pain is just such a normal, instinctual thing that one can only imagine how difficult it was for Quaid to go against his acting instincts and not react to “getting hurt”.

Unfortunately, Quaid carries the movie so much that it completely grinds to a halt when he’s not onscreen. His co-stars are all doing fine, but the dialogue they’re forced to recite is as generic as it gets, with most of the side characters serving as standard archetypes. The plot they’re navigating isn’t that interesting either. I’ll tell you what, I’m really starting to get sick of the “two law enforcement officers who follow the hero’s crime spree” element that so many action movies have been employing lately.

Amber Midthunder is a great romantic counterpart to Quaid with believable chemistry, but once they’re separated, that’s another spark missing in the middle section. Their scenes together are quite charming, which is another example of this working far better as a character-driven comedy than an action movie. I do give credit to the filmmakers for putting in the effort of making her more than simply a damsel in distress and using their relationship to form a decent emotional core to the story.

Final verdict

Even if Novocaine falls a little short in the action-movie department, it’s still a great time at the movies thanks to a sharp comedic script and an incredible lead performance that makes the entire movie. If anything, Jack Quaid has officially become a star in my book. He’s been showing us for the past few years that he’s an actor with a large presence and loads of charisma, but like any quality leading man, he can make an entire movie worth watching.

My rating: 7/10

Novocaine will be released in theaters on Thursday, Mar. 13.

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