It’s fitting that Novocaine (available now on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) might test your tolerance to cinematic violence. This somewhat high-concept action comedy features Jack Quaid — who you might know as the offspring of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan — playing a timid fellow who can’t feel pain, finding himself in a predicament where this trait becomes an asset rather than a hindrance. Yes, the situation inevitably subjects him to a ridiculous amount of harsh treatment, but, as we can’t help but ponder while watching the film, we hope nothing leaves lasting harm or results in demise, because he’s not invincible. I mean, he’s not Rambo or Chuck Norris — he’s just an ordinary guy, not a human-action-figure hybrid, and there are only so many hits he can endure, y’know?

The Gist: R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” plays over the credits, though the irony is clear — Michael Stipe is clearly referring to emotional pain, not literal physical pain or, more relevant to this story, sticking your hand in a scorching deep fryer. Nate Caine (Quaid) suffers from congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), a real genetic disorder that probably doesn’t work exactly how it does in the movie, but let’s set aside skepticism for a bit. He’s a quiet, unassuming man who meticulously organizes his life around his condition — childproofed corners, alarms for bathroom needs, liquid diets to avoid chewing his tongue to shreds (yikes). Nate serves as assistant manager at a bank, where he shows kindness by giving a struggling widower some time on his mortgage. At home, Nate’s social circle is limited to an online gaming buddy he’s never met, Roscoe (Jacob Batalon). His life is small.

However, there’s a girl at work who’s captured Nate’s attention, Sherry (Amber Midthunder). Fortuitously, she accidentally bumps into him in the breakroom, causing him to spill his coffee and suffer a severe burn— a meet-cute that involves injury, of course. She suggests they have lunch, and Nate, though awkward, agrees and shares his uniquely challenging yet pain-free existence with this intelligent, attractive woman who clearly finds him intriguing. She even persuades him to take a bite of her cherry pie, woo woo. Following another date, she visits his place and inquires about his ability to experience pleasure, a question lingering on everyone’s mind, though it remains inadequately answered, perhaps due to a modern film reluctance to depict intimacy. The point stands — our guy is smitten.

How much is he in luurrve, though? We’re about to find out. One day at work three Santa Clauses bust in with Uzis and Glocks, so they can spread some Xmas joy. No, that’s a lie – they wanna rob the joint. They wreak all kinds of havoc, roughing up Nate and grabbing Sherry as a hostage for their escape, blasting away at the cops as they burn rubber outta there. Nate dusts himself off, helps an injured cop, grabs the cop’s dropped pistol and hops in the cop car and tears off after the bad guys goose-chasing all over San Diego for his girl. So there’s your answer as to whether the sex was pleasurable for our dude. And so we get the inevitable: Nate gets into some gnarly fights and suffers stab wounds, bullet wounds, third-degree burns, contusions, bruises, impalements, broken bones and hangnails, and he pretty much shrugs it all off. Oh, forgot to mention that the leader of the robbers is played by Ray Nicholson, so this is all leading to a big fat nepo baby showdown!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Novocaine is an average-guy-loses-it movie crossed with an unsuspecting-hero movie, so it exists somewhere in the gray area between Falling Down and Nobody (or Love Hurts). 

Performance Worth Watching: Quaid continues to build his resume – he popped as a mainstay in the series The Boys, turned up in the two most recent Screams and now has a pair of headlining gigs in Companion and Novocaine, the former showing his capacity for caddishness, and the latter, his capacity for psychological sensitivity AND physical insensitivity. He might have enough It to be a go-to leading man, and may be transcending the condition that helps him as much as it hurts him: congenital superstar parents syndrome.

Memorable Dialogue: I’ll forego the funnier one-liners for a heartfelt utterance via Sherry: “Everybody’s hiding something. We’re all just looking for someone we can show it to.”

Sex and Skin: Just some precoital kissyface.

Our Take: Novocaine is just clever enough to persuade us not to ask too many questions and just go with it. (One night of nookie and the guy’s ready to risk life, limb and the law to save this woman? Okey doke.) And thankfully all the stab wounds, bullet wounds, third-degree burns, contusions, bruises, impalements, broken bones and hangnails don’t occur in brains or livers or other vital areas as Nate squashes his introverted self and summons the self that’s capable of doing horrible, horrible things to horrible, horrible people in the name of luurrve. 

That’s a pretty steep arc, but Quaid and Midthunder cultivate enough chemistry in early scenes to put it in the ballpark of near-plausible character motivation. All right, it’s not plausible at all, but if Nate doesn’t follow through on Sherry’s declaration – “You’re like a superhero!” she coos before they have sex, which is exactly the kind of thing you say to a guy you want to have sex with – then we don’t have much of a movie here. Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (Significant Other) stage some slick action sequences and maintain a snappy pace, while screenwriter Lars Jacobson sprinkles the mayhem with enough crunchy one-liners to keep us chuckling. 

It’s worth noting that this movie, as you may expect, ramps up the violence for a particularly grisly conclusion that made me think of not just RoboCop, but RoboCop: The Director’s Cut. There were also moments where I wondered if the primary bad guy also doesn’t feel pain, considering how much punishment he endures. You’ve been warned, and that warning includes a heads-up that the film’s rom-com charms and average-guy-loses-his-god-damn-shit gimmickry wear off a bit as the violence escalates and the tone shifts from sweet to silly to darkly comic. But by then, we’re committed to seeing it through, if only to see how much Novocaine tests the limits of Movie CIPA before we lose our lunches.

Our Call: Novocaine is genial enough in its extreme violence to endear audiences with the capacity to endure it. It goes from fun to sicko fun. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.