‘Painful to watch’ isn’t often a term of praise, but this action-comedy about a man who loses the ability to feel physical discomfort channels its unusual, nerve-numbing premise into a fun and oddly romantic ride.
Thankfully, intrigue and swagger aren’t prerequisites for its unlucky hero, because introvert Nate Cain (Companion’s Jack Quaid) would be bang out of luck. It isn’t just his dull day job as an assistant manager at a bank; Nate has been born with a sensory condition that means that he’s unable to feel pain or discomfort. Great in theory; in reality, it means a liquid diet so that he doesn’t bite his tongue off and alarms set to remind himself to urinate, so that his bladder doesn’t explode.
Enter co-worker Sherry (Prey’s Amber Midthunder), whose lust for life coaxes him out of his shell. Their burgeoning opposites-attract love story is powered by two charming leads. Jack Quaid put a fun new spin on his shocked everyman in The Boys, and Midthunder is a natural as the free-spirited apple of Nate’s eye.
But just as things seem to be hitting a groove, she’s kidnapped in front of Nate in a brutal bank robbery led by a delightfully unhinged Ray ‘son of Jack’ Nicholson.
Instead of retreating into his man cave and licking his many, many wounds, Nate embarks on a crusade of vigilantism through San Diego to save her. But this is not Liam Neeson in Taken: his particular set of skills don’t extend much further than checking credit scores, administering first aid and never saying ‘ouch’.
Jack Quaid channels the spirit, if not the dexterity, of Jackie Chan
There’s a wholesome subplot about everyone learning to embrace their insecurities, but genre-literate co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (Significant Other) know that’s not what anyone has come to see. It’s immature violence we’re here for, and Quaid dedicates his body to this cause – channelling the spirit, if not quite the dexterity, of peak Jackie Chan.
Deep fryers, rusty pliers, bow-and-arrows… there isn’t an instrument of mayhem that doesn’t feature in Novocaine’s fight scenes. But the glutton-for-punishment shtick gets tiresome at times and is guilty of slowing the story down instead of jolting it forwards.
But if you like your popcorn movies fast, furious and with a lot of leftfield energy, it gets the job done – and not an exploding bladder in sight.
In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Mar 28. In US theaters now