Director: Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
Writer: Lars Jacobson
Stars: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Jacob Batalon
Synopsis: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.
Have you ever gone into a movie with an admittedly fun and inventive concept and were immediately disappointed as soon as the lights in the cinema went down and the projector turned on? This was my reaction to Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s Novocaine, a movie that tries desperately hard to be the next Crank but possesses none of the verve, kineticism, and energy required for this action-comedy hybrid to work well, or at least be on the same level as what Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor brought to the table in 2006. Shot with the lethargic energy of a television pilot, writer Lars Jacobson fills Novocaine’s screenplay with enough Ryan Reynolds-esque cynicism that one wonders if its lead star, Jack Quaid, can do so much more than the quip-heavy characters he has sadly been typecast in ever since starring in The Boys.
Our lead star plays Nathan Caine, an introverted banker who suffers from Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP). This rare condition makes him entirely numb to any form of physical pain. As a result, he lives a somewhat secluded life, with his only friend being someone he speaks to through a video game interface (voiced by Jacob Batalon). However, Nathan’s life will change when he meets Sherry (Amber Midthunder), the bank’s new employee, with whom he falls madly in love. The two quickly connect, and a romance blossoms, but their idyll is short-lived as, the next day, armed bank robbers clear its vault and kidnap Sherry as a hostage, leading Nathan to figure out a way to rescue her, even if it means using his unique condition to his advantage against a horde of antagonists.
What are the robbers’ demands? Who knows! This is never explored, and neither does the B-storylines with the detectives (played by Matt Walsh and Betty Gabriel) attempting to uncover the people behind the robbery feel in any way meaningful. Still, this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of the picture since we’re not here to see the police investigate, but Jack Quaid kick major ass while portraying someone who feels zero amount of pain. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, Berk and Olsen never take advantage of this semi-high concept to the fullest, always preferring to stick Quaid in situations where quips are more important than fists instead of staging elaborately kinetic and playful action sequences where the comedy is found in how Nathan accidentally inflicts massive pain upon his enemies, while he feels nothing.
Many will compare Novocaine’s self-aware, grating humor to the likes of Deadpool, but even the first two films (not so much Deadpool & Wolverine, because it looks so ugly) understood that the thrill of seeing such a character to life isn’t necessarily in the meta-humor (though it is part of the enjoyment) but through its no-holds-barred, hard-R action. While imperfect, David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 remains the best example, as the funniest scenes involve heads being severed or an invisible Brad Pitt being electrocuted, with a great sense of play and comedic timing. The action was playful and always in service of the comedy that made the character such a staple in comic book entertainment. The reason why Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t work was simply because of its overreliance on cynical jokes and a complete ineptitude in crafting cathartic and playful hard-R action, in faithful service of the character’s comedic traits, which Novocaine also falls victim to.
Cinematographer Jacques Jouffret never gives Novocaine’s action its own language or propulsive energy – all of them are flatly shot and haphazardly edited, with even the “gnarliest” moments of its respective sequences (such as Nathan putting an arrow in an assailant’s ear, as one example out of many) cutting away from the violence. Why have such a concept that allows its directors to play with form and give a unique visual touch to the action if they’re not going to do anything with a camera that barely moves or acts as our eye to Nathan’s inadvertent superhero origin story? He doesn’t want to use his condition as an unfair advantage to (accidentally) dispose of one-note antagonists, but it’s the only way that will lead him to Sherry. That alone creates moments of comedic tension worth visualizing, and as undercooked as Jacobson’s script may be, there’s still enough material to make this movie an exciting one, especially if it’s visually exciting.
But why does it look so murky and unengaging, as if it’s afraid to find its own identity in an era where cinema is more and more corrupted by television? (Not my words, Denis Villeneuve’s, who’s 100% right). There isn’t a single image you can extract from Novocaine that feels like a movie or at least gives a form of emotional catharsis so we can latch onto the action (and, by extension, the protagonist). If it wants to be an action/comedy in the grand tradition of Neveldine/Taylor’s Crank, it has to convey its energy primarily through its visuals, which Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor brilliantly did in that film and their subsequent collaborations. Their staggering pop art throughout their work (not so much their solo careers) is what made them household names in “vulgar auteurism,” whether this is a valuable movement or not.
Yet, Berk and Olsen seem afraid of giving Novocaine flavor and personality through its photography and action and would prefer to have this movie feel indistinguishable from the barrage of “content” that gets released to expand an infinite algorithm for a streaming service. And since the movie will come out on VOD two weeks after its theatrical release, as studios no longer support what makes a movie stand the test of time, what’s the point? It’s flimsily shot, unfunny, has no energy to support its action or comedy, and Jack Quaid has sadly tarnished the promising talent he had by playing the same character over and over again with zero nuance or emotional texture that will make us care for him and the burgeoning romance he has with Sherry. On the other hand, Midthunder is underused, and her arc is sadly telegraphed from the start. She fares much better in Mark Anthony Green’s Opus, which also comes out on the same weekend.
Quaid desperately needs to find compelling work that will allow him to expand his range instead of being cast as a variant of Ryan Reynolds, who has grown in wanting to develop movies as commodities to sell Aviation Gin instead of art that will have real perennity ten or even twenty years from now. I’d hate to see that happen to Quaid because he was terrific in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer despite his limited screen time. Nolan knew how to utilize his talents effectively and show the world that he was much more than what the Hollywood machine had sadly typecast him as. I’d like to see more of that from him and less of the unfortunate trajectory he is currently undertaking with Companion and Novocaine, vacuous products with no personal style and memorable value.
