Novocaine

No Pain, No’caine

Novocaine
Directed by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
United States/Canada/South Africa 2025
Paramount
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: One mention of an injury spoiler.

Well now, I saw what I thought wasa particularly harsh review of this one so I was going into Novocaine concentrating on how good the trailer was, as opposed to the word of mouth. And I have to say that, while it has some slight technical problems, I thought this one was actually pretty good.

Novocaine deals with a bank manager, Nathan Caine (played by Jack Quaid and nicknamed Novocaine) who falls in love with one of the new workers at the bank, Sherry (played brilliantly by Amber Midthunder). Nathan is called Novocaine because he has a condition in that he doesn’t feel pain (like the villain from The World Is Not Enough, reviewed here). What this means is, when the bank is robbed by three quite vicious criminals and Sherry is carted away as a hostage, he can go on a ‘somewhat apologetic’ manhunt to get Sherry back without worrying about the pain inflicted on him, while the police also hunt him... because it’s not long before he’s accidentally killed one of the gunmen in a brutal fight.

That’s it, in a nutshell and the film has been accused of being a ‘one joke’ wonder in terms of the kind of brutal violence the hero can just take and walk away from in a playful manner and... yeah, okay, in some ways it is. But that being said, the writers get a lot of mileage out of it and it really doesn’t get dull throughout the course of the picture. It’s also got some nice chemistry and strong performances from the two leads, Quaid and Midthunder... and some pretty charismatic and downright hateable villains too. Jacob Batalon from the recent Spider-Man films is pretty good as Novocaine’s ‘guy in the chair’ and Betty Gabriel does a really good job as one of the sympathetic cops pursuing both Caine and the bad guys.

Now, there are some problems. For instance, there’s a twist moment with one character that, in terms of the movie as a whole, should have been revealed much later on in the story than the halfway point because it kind of detracts from the motivation of the main character you are following. That being said, both myself and my friend,* who went with me, saw that twist coming as soon as the character first appeared (and I’m pretty sure I got a sense of it from the trailer too) so I was somewhat disappointed with that direction. Also, once you have the twist confirmed on screen, you figure that ‘this incident’ and ‘that incident’ now have to happen in order to get the characters worth believing in again and, sure enough... !

One other thing is the editing is a bit choppy and obfuscating in some sequences. 

Plus, there’s a gun in a room suddenly appearing on the floor of a kitchen when it should have been in the alley outside of the building at one point... so I’m guessing the first big fight scene of the movie was deliberately cut down by the director to speed things up for this sequence and the by-product of this decision was having a gun suddenly turn up where there couldn’t possibly have been a gun at this point. Or did I just miss something here? Answers on a postcard.

The biggest problem, however, is that it doesn’t matter how little pain you feel, if a man takes some of these over the top injuries... such as half an arm breaking off like a broken Pez dispenser but then using the long bone protruding from the flappy stump as a weapon... then I don’t buy that a lot of bandages and a few months rest is going to mean you’re all stitched up and good as new. There are some life changing injuries in this film (it may be an action comedy but it doesn’t skimp on the brutal violence) and there’s no way a person just gets up and then is right as rain a little while later.

So, yeah, beyond the execution and limits of the premise, there are huge credibility issues with Novocaine for sure (including characters that just seem to dissappear for the rest of a scene when they’re not wanted and some super extra slow response times from the pursuing police). That being said though, I had a great time with this one and would be happy to see a sequel to it if it comes to pass. The main leads were likeable and I’ll happily pick up a Blu Ray for my parents to check out at some point, I suspect.

*We were the only people in the audience... which would possibly explain why Starbucks has suddenly upped stakes and left all cinemas last week, leaving a huge space which my local cinema doesn't know what to do with.