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Novacaine review: ‘sticks and stones won’t hurt him’
Lars Jacobson’s violent action-comedy is about an assistant bank manager who can’t feel pain
March 27, 2025 13:19
Lars Jacobson’s violent action-comedy is about an assistant bank manager who can’t feel pain
March 27, 2025 13:19Like the armed bank robbers who raid the Santiago Trust Credit Union in this violent action-comedy, the plot attempts to get in and out of your head as soon as possible, hopefully without leaving evidence that very little has been thought through.
Still, a quick Google search reveals that CIP – Congenital Insensitivity to Pain – is actually a thing. This is the condition that causes Jack Quaid’s meek assistant bank manager Nathan Cain to live life as cautiously as possible. Eating solids is a no, no because he might bite off his tongue without ever knowing it. An alarm on his watch is set to go off every three hours as a warning that he must empty his bladder “before it explodes”. Though surely the more immediate risk is that he will urinate himself.
However incontinence is not the kind of event co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen are interested in portraying. Plunging a bare hand into the churning hot oil of a deep fryer to fish out a gun is more their thing.
Lars Jacobson’s barrelling script feels like it was written in bar. As such it is best to drink a lot before watching
Quaid’s geeky Nate does this as he attempt to rescue the bank clerk of his dreams (Amber Midhunter) who has been taken hostage by the robbers. Thereafter the film is a series of set pieces in which Nate not feeling pain is demonstrated in ever more gruesome ways, climaxing in the home of one of the robbers who has booby trapped the place with medieval invention.
“A huge Home Alone fan, apparently,” observes Nate who is played by Quaid (son of Dennis, and with the jaw to prove it ) with the same boy-next-door charm he so successfully brought to the hit anti-superhero series The Boys.
Lars Jacobson’s barrelling script feels like it was written in bar. As such it is best to drink a lot before watching.
Cert 15
★★★