Novocaine

To fully enjoy a caper movie, it is a good idea to pay little attention to `the story’s logic and less to its premise. If I am looking for a plot that makes sense, I’ll read Agatha Christie or Rex Stout or watch an adaptation of a John La Carré novel. I have watched mystery-suspense movies such as “D.O.A.,” “The Big Sleep,” and “North by Northwest” repeatedly because the action in those movies grips me and takes me on a thrill ride. But don’t ask me what any of those films are about. I am never able to keep the good guys and the bad guys straight or understand what the fuss is all about. But I do like the fuss.

And the fuss is what I like about “Novocaine,” a riotous, kooky and mostly comic romp that, despite making little sense, rolls along with insouciance and sometimes with authentic charm. Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) has a congenital defect that prevents him from feeling pain. As a result, his body lacks the signs that warn him of impending danger. His cautious personality compels him to avoid whatever carries a potential for damage, i.e., everything. He abstains from any kind of solid food and drinks only milkshakes for fear of biting his tongue off. Nathan is so compulsive about risk avoidance that he makes Felix Unger look like Jason Bourne.

Nathan, assistant manager of the San Diego Trust Bank, has a crush on Sherry (Amber Midthunder), one of the branch’s tellers, and begins to date her. When bank robbers break into the bank dressed as Santa Clauses and take Sherry as a hostage, Nathan abandons his multi-layered security blanket, throws caution to the Santa Ana winds and sets out to rescue his new girlfriend.

Nathan’s neurological insensitivity is now an asset. There’s no pain in his quest for gain. Much of the action is hard to watch as the hero endures shootings, stabbings, head bumps, charred flesh, and even an arrow through the leg, a wound that proves to be a mere inconvenience when Nathan tries to maneuver narrow hallways. Every deep flesh wound, bullet hole and third-degree burn elicits barely a whimper and usually a smile from the hero. But it’s a different story for the viewer who must sit through countless torture scenarios. And the four-letter words that accompany them.

It may be gratuitous gore, but I found it no more hideous than the rest of the junk that our screens have put in front of us lately. Just coming off the award-winning viciousness of “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Perez,” and “Anora,” to say nothing of the dopamine-draining splatterings of the “Smile” and “Terrifier” franchises, “Novocaine” has that “I’ve seen it all before” flavor, but rises above those monstrosities by not taking itself seriously.

Thanks to the pepper-induced sneeze of its pace and to the charming performances of Jack Quaid (equally as good in the recent under-rated, pointedly violent, modern-day morality tale “Companion”), Amber Midthunder, and Ray Nicholson in the underwritten but scrappy part of the main villain, the film carries itself like a Ferrari that lets us enjoy its weekend speed and flash before it lands in the repair shop on Monday.

I enjoyed the directors’ (Dan Burke and Robert Olsen; script by Lars Jacobson) turbo-charged romp the same way I took to the Safdie brothers’ “Cut Gems” and “Good Time,” Owen Kline’s “Funny Pages,” and Julio Torres’ “Problemista,” all recent films about young “lost generation” male angst. Nathan is yet another basement dwelling, screen addicted young man whose unique condition may free him from physical distress, but not from emotional and spiritual pain. He used to be protected from those, and from many other things, but through his ordeal, he, who once was blind, now sees.

What Nathan begins to take in is not just a world that is east of Eden and characterized by pain, suffering and death, but his own place in that world, a calling that moves him to combat those harsh realities with the counter-offensives of friendship, love, forgiveness and redemption. A well-aimed pistol shot, like a sling shot stone to a giant’s forehead, doesn’t hurt either. The movie’s violence may rival the deeds portrayed in the Book of Maccabees; yes, joints are disarticulated in both; but its tender heart saves it in the end.

“Take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” —Ephesians 6:13

A pain-free world would be a sin-free world. We rejected that part of the bargain inside the garden. We can numb ourselves to our chosen world’s slings and arrows and anesthetize ourselves to their pain, but if we do, we say no to the gain, the physical, and the spiritual.

• Violence: Extreme
• Profane language: Extreme
• Vulgar/Crude language: Extreme
• Drugs/Alcohol: Moderate
• Sex: Mild
• Nudity: None
• Occult: None
• Wokeism: None

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in Christian Spotlight reviews are those of the reviewers themselves, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Christian Answers.