At its core, Dan Berk and Robert Olsen바카라s Novocaine is your classic boy-meets-girl story where a boy falls in love with a girl and goes to heroic lengths to save her when she's taken hostage at a bank robbery. Novocaine is dressed up in the action-comedy aesthetic that has dominated the genre post-MCU, post-Dwayne 바카라The Rock바카라 Johnson, and post-Ryan Reynolds making a career out of winking at the camera. Basically, if you바카라ve watched any action-comedy in the last decade, you know what you바카라re in for.
The story follows Nathan (Jack Quaid), a sheltered assistant manager at a trust credit union in San Diego. Nathan was born with congenital analgesia, a medical condition that renders him unable to feel pain and enjoy the little things in life like orgasmically delicious cherry pie. The result was lots of bullying in school and an unintentionally cool nickname like 바카라novocaine바카라 (a local anesthetic). His average-Joe existence is catapulted to high octane heavens when his office crush Sherry (Amber Midthunder) is taken hostage during a robbery at their bank.
There are the usual heist movie twists and turns but where Novocaine is most fun is in how it inadvertently comments on the ridiculousness of action heroes바카라 indestructibility. We watch Nathan take grotesque amounts of damage바카라bent fingers, burnt crispy skin peeling off, bones crunching. The sound design revels in the sounds of squelching flesh and cracking cartilage serving as a constant reminder of how much pain Nathan should be feeling. It highlights the absurdity of action movies where protagonists shrug off bullets and punches like mosquito bites, despite not having a medical condition that justifies it.
For all its commitment to Nathan바카라s lack of pain, the film doesn바카라t extend the same logic to its villain. Simon, our supposed mere mortal antagonist, also seems to be made of steel. He gets shot, electrocuted, and brutally beaten but just keeps getting back up. It makes for a relentless, if slightly ridiculous, final act, where the only characters who seem to suffer any real consequences are the cops. Meanwhile, Simon and Nathan are practically cartoon characters, enduring absurd amounts of damage with little consequence.
The fight sequences have the usual MCU-style choreography바카라slick, slightly exaggerated, always punctuated by a quip. Berk and Olsen made this film for the big screen, not for distracted, second-screen-scrolling audiences, and you can tell from the way action is framed: wide shots, dynamic movement, practical effects over CGI. The action is convincing, if unremarkable and 바카라genre-ic바카라 in every sense of the word.
The fact that the director duo was binging on The Boys (2019) while rewriting Lars Jacobson바카라s action script is visible. Quaid바카라s Nathan is clearly modeled after Hughie: an awkward everyman thrust into extreme circumstances. But where The Boys is subversive, Novocaine plays it straight. That바카라s not necessarily a bad thing. Not every film needs to deconstruct the superhero mythos or redefine masculinity like Vasan Bala바카라s Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (2018) did. Sometimes, a film just wants to entertain. But the lack of layered self-awareness of Novocaine makes Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota the superior film.
Both Nathan and Surya (from Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota) share the same disorder, grow up with overprotective parents, and want to use their unique condition to fight bad guys in an effort to save the women they love바카라how else would you make use of a superpower-like disorder like CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis) in an action film? But that바카라s where the similarities end. Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota was witty, sharp, and packed with metacommentary on action heroes, masculinity, and cinematic tropes. Bala crafted something that was both an homage and a playful critique of the genre.
Novocaine doesn바카라t have that level of depth. Midthunder바카라s Sherry, while competent, doesn바카라t hold a candle to Radhika Madan바카라s Supri. Nathan is likable but lacks the infectious charm of Surya. Even Quaid, who is usually great at playing the well-meaning everyman, seems a little tired here. He바카라s having fun, but his turn as a misogynistic douchebag in Companion (Quaid바카라s other 2025 release) was far more engaging than this performance.
Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis is a real condition that has popped up in films and TV for years. Sometimes it is played for tragedy, sometimes for comedy. Grey바카라s Anatomy (2005-ongoing) had a patient with congenital insensitivity to pain, as did House (2004-2012). The World Is Not Enough (1999) gave us Renard, a Bond villain who may not have been born with CIPA but had a bullet lodged in his brain that made him numb to pain and practically unkillable.
Ultimately, Novocaine is a popcorn flick that delivers what it promises but doesn바카라t offer much beyond that. It바카라s fun, fast-paced, and at times delightfully gross, but it바카라s also predictable, conventional, and safe. Not every movie can be or even has to be a genre-defining masterpiece. Sometimes, they just have to be fun enough to make 100 minutes fly by. For that, Novocaine does the job.
Debiparna Chakraborty is an independent Film, TV and Pop Culture journalist who has been feeding into the great sucking maw of the internet since 2010.
