’Novocaine’ Review: This Jack Quaid-Starring Actioner Starts Like a Shot Before Numbing Effects Take Hold

SXSW: His Nathan Caine might not be able to feel pain, but oh, the audience will be wincing by the time Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s initially clever feature lands its final blow.

It’s not easy to get a big laugh before a film‘s opening credits even complete their roll, but Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s “Novocaine” manages to pull that trick off without a hitch. Yes, those first laughs — built on the inspired choice to open a film about a guy who can’t feel any pain with R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” — rely on an audience knowing the action outing’s biggest and best idea before they’ve even taken the first sip of their multiplex soda, but there’s much more going on. Well, at first.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, charming) can’t feel any pain, a kicky enough idea for both a film and a tagline (and, as we soon see, a pretty clever and also incredibly mean nickname), and it’s understandably made his life as downbeat as, well, one of R.E.M.’s biggest hits. When we meet Nathan, we’re treated not just to the dulcet tones of Michael Stipe, but to a quick tour of the various guardrails our hero has set up to ensure his inability to feel pain doesn’t lead to his accidental death. There are tennis balls affixed to any and all sharp corners, ice cubes placed in his coffee cup before he even pours a drop, and an ever-ready box of Band-Aids.

Nathan has gotten this far in life — read: quiet apartment, nice job as an assistant bank manager, incredibly bleak social life — by playing it beyond safe. And who can blame him? Screenwriter Lars Jacobson’s script is oriented around a very real disorder: CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis), one that requires those who suffer from it to lead ordered, careful lives in order to, well, lead any kind of life at all.

But Nate dreams of more. Mostly, he dreams of cute bank teller Sherry (a charming Amber Midthunder, making an incredible case for her own rom-com right now), who blew into his quiet workplace a few months ago and unknowingly upended everything. Nathan might not be able to feel physical pain, but he’s got a very tender heart, and when sad-eyed client Earl (Lou Beatty Jr.) bemoans the recent loss of his wife over the very possible loss of his business, Nate can’t decide what hurts more, the heartbroken man before him or the possibility he’ll never feel that kind of loss for himself.

Be careful what you wish for, Nate! Inspired by Earl’s love story and sick of perpetually sitting things out, Nate agrees to go to lunch with Sherry after she sneaks up on him and inadvertently causes him to pour hot coffee all over his hand. She’s very sorry, and she’s very sweet, and how can she possibly make it up to him? Over the course of just two dates (in the same day! good job, Nate!), the duo bond in unexpected ways, opening themselves up to the possibility that hiding our weaknesses is the shortest way to a life unlived. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the seemingly nerdy Nate is positively covered in sexy tattoos he’s done himself.

This is all a very long way to say that the first act of Berk and Olsen’s film is sweet, funny, and smart in ways that will feel like a distant memory by the time “Novocaine” lands its final blow. Nathan Caine might not feel any pain, but oooof, will his audience, as the film’s eventual hyper-violence slides so swiftly from amusing to horrifying, then somehow finding title-appropriate numbness to boot. By the film’s final act, you’ll see things you’ve never seen before, and probably never wanted to (no, you can’t imagine where a fractured bone will end up, my goodness).

The day after Nate and Sherry’s double decker dates, their quiet workplace is besieged by a trio of asshole robbers dressed like Santa (yes, “Novocaine” is a Christmas movie), who do some serious damage to the bank, the skeleton crew of cops who show up to bust them, and Nate’s mental state when they (nooooo) take Sherry hostage. Just last night, Sherry was telling him his condition makes Nate something of a superhero, and there’s never been a better chance to prove it than right now. Soon, mild-mannered Nate is off after the baddies, intent on getting back the only person who has ever seen his limitations as gifts.

This concept is a great one: what if an everyday geek was genetically wired to go absolutely ham to win back the dreamy girl who has stolen his heart? Initially, Nate is just as surprised as we are, but Jacobson’s script and Berk and Olsen’s direction soon offer a batshit U-turn that dilutes this idea in myriad disappointing ways. Sure, we might be able to chalk up Nate’s uncanny ability to battle bad dudes because he literally can’t feel the damage they are inflicting on him, but why does every single guy he fights also have to be a roided-up freak with no interest in self-preservation?

Nate isn’t just fighting other everyday dudes with criminal intent, he’s stuck going up against three insane bank robbers (including Ray Nicholson, who has some serious fun with a relatively small role) and the meanest Nazi sympathizing tattoo artist you’ve ever seen. He responds in kind, though not in character, and while Quaid is uniquely skilled at playing both sides of Nate (mild-mannered everyman, wacked out action star), it’s hard to marry them into one cohesive character.

Yes, it’s fun to watch in the context of “this is a crazy action film,” and that bent also helps some of the film’s other, untethered aspects go down easy (like a big twist involving Sherry that’s both shocking and totally unnecessary or Betty Gabriel as a cop with the world’s worst decision-making skills), but for a film that starts with such natty promise, it does sting. So too does the actual action, which moves from cartoonishly fun to grim and queasy with nary a step in between. We don’t want to see Nate actually tortured, and the impact hurts both emotionally and physically. What a gutpunch, huh?

Still, the film makes a great case for Quaid as action hero, Midthunder as romantic charmer, and Berk and Olsen as being ready to step out of their horror-centric background. Next time, make it end on a buzzier break, huh? “Novocaine” doesn’t need to make anyone this numb, not after start with a real (sorry) shot to the arm.

Grade: C+

“Novocaine” premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival. Paramount Pictures will release it in theaters on Friday, March 14.

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