Amber Midthunder stars as Sherry and Jack Quaid as Nate in Novocaine.Paramount Pictures
Novocaine
Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Written by Lars Jacobson
Starring Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder and Jacob Batalon
Classification 14A; 110 minutes
Opens in theatres March 14
In Novocaine, a hapless guy, played by the affable Jack Quaid, has a genetic condition that absolves him from feeling physical pain – a knife through his hand may only elicit a confused smirk. The brutal action-comedy puts that condition – and the audience’s stomach – to the test with grisly bone fractures, self-administered surgeries and a torture scene where a pair of pliers meet fingernails.
That may not sound all that gruesome for anyone raised on the Saw franchise, or even Deadpool. But there’s something about the way this movie so vividly and diabolically sells the familiar violence that had the audience I saw the movie with squirming out loud, our screams choking on giddy laughter.
Perhaps these sensationally sadistic bits hit harder because Quaid’s hero character Nathan Caine, who is on a mission to save his new girlfriend from hostage-taking bank robbers, is so carefree about them. When his hand sizzles in a deep fryer or when he casually breaks his own thumb to slip out of handcuffs, Nathan’s nonchalant expressions put the burden of feeling entirely on us. And boy do we feel it.
If only the movie, so clumsily strung together around these moments that attack our nervous system, could be as effective. When it’s not inflicting maximum violence, Novocaine tends to leave us numb.
That’s no fault of Quaid, though. He’s so good at playing soft and nervous in ultraviolent fare including The Boys, the recent anti-Valentine thriller Companion and now Novocaine, where those boyish qualities can be comically destabilizing. And the chemistry he shares in Novocaine’s early sections with Prey’s Amber Midthunder is so cozy and charming that it’s rather disappointing when the action reduces the budding romance between his Nathan and her Sherry to table setting.
It’s through Sherry’s affectionate inquiries that we get to know the specifics about Nathan’s life with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA). He can’t eat solids because he’s prone to biting off his own tongue. There are tennis balls mounted on every desk corner so he doesn’t injure himself walking through his job as assistant manager at a bank. He has a timer set to remind him to relieve himself so that his bladder doesn’t burst. His days are constant vigilance – so he doesn’t let himself die without noticing.
Nate, who can feel no physical pain, is on a quest to save his girlfriend, Sherry, from bank robbers who have taken her hostage.Photo Credit: Marcos Cruz/Paramount Pictures
His safe space is playing video games online with a best friend (Jacob Batalon) he never met in real life, a virtual existence that’s harmful in a different way. It’s a bubble-like existence that keeps Nathan shackled with the kind of social anxiety that’s feeling all too familiar in a postpandemic world.
There’s so much promise in that premise, especially when Midthunder’s Sherry, a colleague at his bank branch who charms her way into Nathan’s after hours, bares her own emotional and physical scars. But Novocaine isn’t really equipped to explore the ideas it introduces about social anxiety, self-inflicted harm and living with a debilitating condition beyond easy platitudes. At one point, we hear a radio announcer say, “You can’t let your disability hold you back.” I’m no expert on the subject, but in a movie exploiting a disability for gory kicks, the tossed off sentiment feels crass.
The action kicks in when three bank robbers dressed like Santa Claus violently burst into Nathan’s branch, steal millions in cash, leave a few casualties and take Sherry hostage. Nathan, abandoning all safeguards, proceeds in hot (and romantic) pursuit.
Novocaine moves fast and furious, just so you don’t think too much about the nonsensical ways Nathan keeps catching up to his assailants, or discovering their whereabouts. The laziness in Lars Jacobson’s screenplay is all too obvious, where it becomes all about repeatedly restaging the movie’s one good sadistic joke, ushering Nathan along to the next setting where he can endure escalating carnage. At one point, he even enters a booby-trapped house of pain, where crossbows and spiked balls are let loose on anyone who enters.
Novocaine gets away with such inanity because it’s willing to laugh at its own silliness, with jokes calling out the inexplicable setups. And it helps that Quaid is so good at landing every punchline, if not punch. His Nathan may not have any sense of pain, but Quaid gives him a great sense of humour.
