Novocaine (dirs. Dan Berk and Robert Olsen)

by Jack Martin | Mar 25, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 110 mins

UK Distributor: Paramount Pictures

UK Release Date: 28 March 2025

WHO’S IN NOVOCAINE?

Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Conrad Kemp, Evan Hengst

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (directors), Lars Jacobson (writer), Adam Friedlander, Joby Harold, Julian Rosenberg, Drew Simon and Tory Tunnell (producers), Andrew Kawczynski (composer), Jacques Jouffret (cinematographer), Christian Wagner (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A bank manager (Quaid) who feels no pain sets out on a violent quest…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON NOVOCAINE?

Often in an action movie, you’ll see people enduring the most painful stuff imaginable – taking numerous blows to the body, being riddled with numerous bullets or sharp items, acting opposite Steven Seagal, and much more – that you’re sometimes wondering how they’re still able to walk away by the end. Which is why the concept of Novocaine, the new action-comedy from directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, is so fun and interesting: what if the action hero couldn’t even feel the horrific stuff constantly happening to them?

Berk and Olsen, previously of the dark comedy Villains and the Paramount+ thriller Significant Other, direct a script by Lars Jacobson (his first mainstream solo writing credit after the 2008 indie horror Baby Blues) that leans hard into this premise, taking as much advantage of its comedic and action-based opportunities as it possibly can. But even more impressively, especially for a movie about someone who cannot physically feel anything, you also end up feeling so much for its bruised and battered protagonist, which makes the otherwise hard punches not leave one too much in pain afterwards.

The film is about Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), an assistant bank manager who was born with a rare condition that prevents him from feeling any physical pain, and is something of a social shut-in after an overly cautious childhood, spending his free time playing video games with his online friend Roscoe (Jacob Batalon). Nathan begins to come out of his shell after meeting and falling for Sherry (Amber Midthunder), a new bank teller who takes a keen interest in him, but their bank is suddenly robbed by a group of criminals led by dangerous criminal Simon (Ray Nicholson), who takes Sherry away with them as a hostage. Emboldened for the first time in his life, Nathan promptly sets out to rescue her from the armed criminals – and along the way, finds his inability to feel pain becoming more and more useful as he encounters one deadly foe after another.

As you can imagine from such a concept, the filmmakers have a good deal of fun showing how exactly their main character’s disability functions as its own plausible superpower, as though it’s a darkly funny X-Men spin-off set in the world of The Raid (with almost as much brutal violence). Throughout the course of the movie, our hero gets shot, burnt, thrown about, pierced with arrows and daggers, hanged from ceilings, and at one point even has his hand deep-fried, and his reaction is always as though he’s just stepped in dog muck that can easily be washed off. There is a lot of humour to get out of this character’s non-reactions to some rather horrific things happening to his body at multiple junctions, including a torture scene where he has to feign the desired reactions to appease his torturer, but Jacobson’s script is smart for also taking time to address how his condition is also a genuine barrier in his life. For instance, he’s not allowed to eat solid foods since he could bite into his own tongue without knowing, and he has an alarm go off every few hours so he is aware of when to use the bathroom, both of which also resulted in a lot of bullying and torment when he was younger.

Rather than ask the audience to pity this character and the condition he has, Novocaine has you genuinely cheering for him in various moments where he learns to embrace his disability in ways that are not only gruesomely funny but also rather heartfelt. Jack Quaid’s lead performance is key to this, as the actor – already an established go-to “charming good guy” personality thanks to shows and films like The Boys, Scream (2022) and as recently as Companion – pours a generous amount of likeability into this geeky and socially-awkward character that clearly knows right from wrong, and who despite his lack of social cues does have a warm and endearing magnetism about himself that he simply isn’t confident enough to fully accept.

A large chunk of the film leading up to the aforementioned bank heist is dedicated to him building this sweet connection with Amber Midthunder’s Sherry, who herself is fleshed out more than just being the mere damsel that Quaid’s knight must rescue, and at times it is legitimately endearing to see them work off each other as they share tender secrets about the (mostly physical) scars they carry around with them. Their chemistry is palpable enough that you really get why he would go through all this trouble – not that he can feel any of it – just to get her back, even after a midway twist that initially threatens to undo all the charm of a certain character but thankfully doesn’t completely taint any previous character development.

Though the movie has a great lead character, a solid central romance, and plenty of gory violence that is both funny and wince-inducing, it also has a few notable weaknesses. The villain, portrayed with real menace in parts by Ray Nicholson, is a fairly stock action-movie baddie that is almost too cartoonishly brutal at times, while a sub-plot involving Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh as detectives pursuing the hero as a potential suspect goes in all the directions you’d expect, and could easily have been cut out of the movie without taking away too much. The violence can also become a bit much to handle, especially in a climax that often feels like overkill, even in a heightened action-comedy such as this.

But when it works, which is thankfully more often than not, Novocaine is a very enjoyable ride that doesn’t waste its premise, whilst also giving us a new kind of action hero that you’ll feel everything for, even when he cannot.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Novocaine is a funny and violent action-comedy that makes the most of its fun premise with plenty of painful sequences, but keeping it together isn’t just the huge likeability of its lead hero, played with as much puppyish warmth as ever by Jack Quaid, and the charm of his on-screen romance with an equally magnetic Amber Midthunder, but also its smart portrayal of the central condition as a personal barrier than can be embraced as a superpower.