Novocaine (2025)
6/10
Starring
Jack
Quaid
Amber
Midthunder
Ray
Nicholson
Betty
Gabriel
Directed
by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
What I
like about the movie is the way it captures your attention from the start. The
story pulls you in and keeps you interested in how this relationship on screen
will go. And having seen only the movie posters (not the trailer), you’re left
wondering when the action will start.
I have
to say, the main attraction in this movie is the character dynamics and acting
between the two leads, Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder. They made me love the
movie and had me smiling every time I saw the way they interacted.
This
movie has a nice story, that fails to land perfectly, you can tell from which
point the writers lost inspiration, and the movie just went off the tracks. The
plot is about a man named Nathan Caine (Quaid), a well-behaved, keep-to-himself
type with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA). This
condition has made it hard for him to experience things most people take for
granted, especially when it comes to women. At his workplace, there’s a girl he
likes, and she likes him too, and her name is Sherry (Midthunder). She
convinces him to hang out, and they connect, and there was a brief something
brewing between them.
Then
there’s a bank robbery at their workplace, and Sherry gets kidnapped, and it
was at this point some of the movie’s flaws start to show. Some predictable
elements creep in, along with very cliché moments we’ve seen before—like when
someone who shouldn’t be in an action situation ends up right in the middle of
it and behaves in an unrealistic way. But the movie is an action comedy, so it
tries to laugh these things off. Nathan feels it's his job to go after the
kidnappers and save Sherry, and when a man who can’t feel pain goes after
people, some interesting stuff is bound to happen.
That
said, I didn’t like the comedy during the fight scenes, I get it, he can’t feel
pain, but he can still die, so there should be some sense of danger, not just
banter while getting hit.
Even
though I mentioned the movie has predictable elements, there’s a flip in
character intent that I did not see coming at all. We learn there’s more to the
bank robbery than we thought, and that twist had me glued to the screen—I was
more hooked than ever.
Like I
said earlier, the final act, went completely off the rails, the movie just went
too violent for no reason—too much shooting, too much rage, and way too many
broken bones. That kind of brought the movie’s appeal down a notch.
Would I
recommend you see this movie, yes, I would. In the end, it was still a nice
movie to see.
