Novocaine: A film that beats with Jack Quaid (The Boys)?

“It hurts to live without you.”. Well… not quite. While viewers eagerly await season 5 of The Boys, Jack Quaid begins to appear on the big screen, and movie theaters are less inclined to offer action comedies, Novocaine arrives like an uppercut to unhinge the jaws of fans of fighting and bloodshed. The film by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen aims to establish itself as the gritty entertainment of the beginning of the year. Has it succeeded?

What's it about?

The story follows Nate, an assistant manager at a San Diego bank who leads a seemingly ordinary life. He divides his time between his hobbies, video games, and a somewhat boring job. But Nate has a peculiarity: an illness that prevents him from feeling pain. When a robbery turns sour, and his new girlfriend is taken hostage, Nate follows only his courage and sets out to find her captors. What if his greatest weakness became his strength?

Action comedies, Netflix and the like, have made them their stock in trade. Just mention the recent Back in Action and The Gardener to imagine the importance these offerings have taken on for the giants of living room entertainment. However, few manage to find favor with fans of serious fights and intrigue, which are much less so. In 2024, we loved The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling at less than a tenth of his comedic potential, yet doing an excellent job in front of David Leitch's camera.

Novocaine promised to be at least as entertaining, in addition to being much less general audience. Concretely, we could expect an unleashing of violence before meeting the endearing loser Hughie from The Boys in season 5 on Prime Video. The trailer had also bet on sequences that would make the most sensitive among us shudder.

We liked it because...

While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, doesn't multiply stylistic effects and doesn't cut through the clutter as one might have thought, Novocaine seduces mainly thanks to its awkward and naive hero. The introduction is particularly successful in this sense, playing on the chemistry of the two characters to better immortalize the heartbreak that Sherry's kidnapping represents at the time of the robbery. With a frenetic pace, the film advances towards its goal without flinching, without bothering with the impression of plausibility.

The gags are numerous, the lines well-judged too, and we become fond of this man who improvises as a vigilante and worries about the injuries he inflicts on his adversary when he throws a burning frying pan at his face. It's almost like Home Alone, with the traps set for the bad guys being so childish and playful.

Unlike the classic Chris Columbus, here, we focus on showing our opponent's skin frying in the heat, immortalizing his cries of pain as much as the cracking of his bones. While we can see the twists coming a mile away, we're not really here to rack our brains. We even forgive the film for its narrative shortcuts, especially when it comes to illustrating the character's progression. From zero to hero, Nate would have deserved a slower build-up to convince us.

We didn't love it because...

The fact remains that, despite its obvious playfulness and Jack Quaid's performance, Novocaine struggles to live up to its concept. While the abuse comes one after another and regularly makes us cringe, the film never manages to surprise us. The tough interrogation, the confrontation with a thick brute, and the fight with the ultimate villain, who also has a high pain tolerance, Novocaine ticks all the boxes and is seriously lacking in inventiveness. Imagine a slightly sadistic way to fight a villain, and you can be sure it'll be there. Worse, the film seems to gradually forget that its character's insensitivity isn't armor or an ability to regenerate, plunging into an escalation of nasty injuries, but always with no effect on his health.

The approach is also reminiscent of another character with the completely opposite peculiarity. In 2016, Tim Miller filmed an immortal Deadpool, capable of surviving dismemberment and other joyous events without being insensitive to pain. The film developed by Fox was not lacking in inventiveness, dipping into body horror to make our hair stand on end or make us wince in pain. In this respect, Deadpool proved more inventive and effective than Novocaine.

Do we recommend it?

When it comes down to it, Novocaine is not as refreshing as we might have hoped, not as crazy either, but it is fun enough that we want to spend a little less than an hour in the dark following Nate on his quest to save the woman he has fallen in love with. To be surprised, we will have to wait for season 5 of The Boys in 2026 on Prime Video.

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