Co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (“Villains,” “Body”) unite for “Novocaine,” a burst vein in filmic form. Nate (Jack Quaid) can’t feel pain due to a genetic disorder that renders his nervous system completely unaware of biting sensations. The concept seems ideal before you learn that he sets timers at three-hour intervals to use the bathroom (so his bladder doesn’t burst) and sustains himself on an all-liquid diet (to avoid unknowingly gnawing his tongue off). His condition is inconvenient and limiting until he’s confronted with the rare, prime opportunity to use it to become a poor man’s Punisher.
Nate, the shy, scant assistant general manager at a local bank, also has a crush on one of the clerks, the spitfire, straight-from-the-shoulder Sherry (Amber Midthunder). Flirtatious and extroverted, Sherry is the first person who seems to bring Nate out of his shell, and after a passionate night together, he’s beyond smitten. When robbers (including a deliriously devious Ray Nicholson) storm the bank, donning Santa suits, guns blazing, they make it away with not just cash but Sherry as their hostage. Already hopelessly in love, Nate packs up his pitiful nature in a pinch, vowing to retrieve his lady by any means necessary. What ensues is a cross-city chase with plenty of pit stops loaded with gunfire, closed fists, boobytraps, burns, and blood that Nate is constantly, impressively, taking on the chin.
“Novocaine” can be hard to watch, but in just the way you want. The brutality doesn’t hold back, seldom cutting away from the moments that make you clutch your body in vicarious defense. It’s deliciously gratuitous. The injuries Nate inflicts and obtains range from hilarious to harrowing, and Lars Jacobson’s smartly written script juggles the spectrum of tone well. Skin-blistering, bone-breaking traumas are utilized not only for humor and action but story structure as well. Clever callbacks and references to prior maims maintain the kinetic pacing of the film without feeling like the details are thrown away.
But despite Nate’s near-pathetic dedication to Sherry, which serves as a center of his longing personality, Quaid and Midthunder’s chemistry falls soap opera short. While the intention of “Novocaine”’s genre blend is to paint Nate as a lovesick schmuck (the comedic core) and subvert it with his rampage (the axis of the action), the leads’ romance is the driving force of the frenzied bloodbath without being compelling in its rising action.
There’s a fragile attempt to link the depth of their affair to the baring of hidden scars, but ironically, this is the flightiest detail in the script. It’s fair game for the love story to be robotic and mundane in concept–this contributes to the foolish heart of the film–but the execution of it needed a sorely missed spark between the leads to sell the risible, battered absurdity that follows.
In a film of this nature, it’d be simple to chuck guts at the wall and see what sticks, but there’s intentional craft on display. “Novocaine”’s action set pieces compel you to lean all the way in and then force you back. Quaid is fantastic in the role, not reinventing his wheel of the charming sucker, but adding a punch of autonomous badassery that we’re still even yet to see bloom in his most similar (and famous role) in “The Boys.” Quaid embodies a cocktail of shrill panic and misguided gusto with a well-toned history in the form, but nevertheless a loveable portrayal that keeps investment through the end.
“Novocaine” is a berserk romp of a time: a film where the badass maintains his title despite getting his ass beat on a loop. Berk and Olsen accomplish a formidable action-comedy, one that puts their horror roots in neon lights and sense of humor on equal display. As blood spatters and bodies bend, crack, and twist, “Novocaine” keeps you laughing, grimacing, and flinching, even as Nate does none of the above.
