When an accessible-restroom has a notice saying “not all disabilities are visible,” the idea is to allow the individual the dignity to decide if they need to use it.
Nate Caine is assistant manager at a San Diego bank. As a consequence of a rare genetic disorder, he does not feel pain. Much of his childhood was spent in hospital. When he did attend school, he was bullied. He blends green-smoothies, because it is unsafe to eat solid food. He avoids staff social events, instead forming a close friendship with fellow-gamer Roscoe. He has drawn multiple tattoos over his own body. He needs an alarm every three hours to remind him to go to the bathroom, as he can’t feel his bladder filling up. He is skinny and clearly spends his time indoors. He wears a reindeer tie for Christmas. He is nervous with women and seems reluctant when Sherry, a colleague at the bank, asks him out.
When three bank robbers (led by bully Simon, all gym-muscle and frat-boy-smile) turn up dressed as Santa Claus, emptying the vault and abducting Sherry as they flee, Nate is improbably forced into a split-second decision, stealing a police car in pursuit. Enlisting the help of Roscoe, and by way of a swastika-adorned tattoo-artist, he locates the house of one of the robbers, which has been booby-trapped. A calm police-detective and her wise-cracking partner eventually catch up with them and the movie accelerates towards it’s gripping end.
“Novocaine” (Paramount Pictures) is showing now at the Montrose Playhouse. Its mechanically-regular, well-paced story bears considerable fruit. The directors proceed at just the right speed for the audience to take it all in, but without giving us enough time to say, “that can’t happen!” The cuts in editing while progressing from one location to the next are flawless. Take the early transition from the bank to a restaurant-kitchen. We don’t spend too long in either. There is enough action but we don’t linger. We are briskly moved on. The pace is maintained by a vigorous, propulsive musical score, just intrusive enough to push the heartbeat up a little bit, without overwhelming the experience. The writers have carefully listened to the words we actually use to talk to each other in 2025. Cracking dialog: sharp, accessible, modern (“There he is!” at the end is a perfect example) combines with cheeky comedy: quick, energetic, stand-up-ish. On the evening I attended, the many one-liners mostly landed well with the Playhouse audience.
The ingenious idea forming the structural bedrock of the story (that Nate cannot feel pain) is regrettably taken too far and the film plummets into excessive violence and some gratuitous scenes of torture (which he has to feign being bothered by). I guess since “Tom and Jerry” we have become somewhat programmed to laugh at violence (inflicted on an unlucky cat at least). But Nate is a disabled man and so here the risk is that all the shooting, knifing, kicking and punching produces unease about laughing in the audience, thus completely derailing the movie. Would we really deliver a comedy-show-quality one-liner while a knife is splitting open our arm? The directors rather boxed themselves in by opting to go all-in with the violence. Their balancing act is not entirely successful, and dialling down the brutality substantially would have enabled the humour to sit less guiltily. Still, there is much to enjoy, and the movie has real freshness and fabulous energy.
Jack Quaid has recently been quite busy. He also played the co-lead in “Companion,” which I reviewed in February, describing his performance then as “believable and slightly creepy at the same time.” He is thoroughly enjoying himself in a role which seems to suit him, and the creepiness has been wholly swapped for Nate’s like-ability. Take the very, very clever sequence in the booby-trapped house, arguably the strongest in the whole film. The audience knows something he does not: dialog in the previous scene between two of the robbers informs us about the presence of those traps. Nate arrives: naturally he will encounter the snares, but neither he nor we know what, or how many, have been placed, or how they will affect him, given his disability. As the scene develops, he appears to talk to himself, but of course he is actually talking to us: orientating us to the booby-traps (“there’s a crossbow under the sink?”) and maintaining the flow of humour (“he’s a prepper – ew!”).
However, Jack Quaid doesn’t have to do all the heavy-lifting by himself. While the male characters have the lion’s-share of the screen time (car workshops, gyms, gaming), perhaps the more engaging members of the supporting cast are the two strong-willed women. Nate’s girlfriend, Sherry, is played tenderly and with real emotional depth by Amber Midthunder; and Betty Gabriel plays detective Mincy as a perceptive sage. The role of his gamer-sidekick Roscoe, played by Jacob Batalon, is to breezily stress the humour (“too chatty for me,” as one of the cops says).
Refreshingly free of geekery despite all the hide-and-seek, there are few smartphones and no GPS-, drone-, or satellite-surveillance at all. For that, “Black Bag” is your best bet. Indeed, to watch both these current releases back-to-back would not be a bad idea. Both found me engrossed, giving my full attention from the outset. “Novocaine” is not a twist-and-turn thriller (which “Black Bag” is, as is “Conclave”): it sits squarely within the action/comedy genre and, in general, succeeds in these intentions: entertaining and gripping in equal parts. There is also more than a hint of hitting the bully back. Does it delve more deeply into genetic diseases or disabilities? Perhaps that is best kept for a more serious film.
Adam Poole
27 March 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
