Novocaine (2025) Review

 "No, not the fingernails!"

-Nathan Caine

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), the assistant manager at a credit union, has an amazing date with his co-worker, Sherry (Amber Midthunder).  The next day, the credit union is robbed and Sherry is taken as a hostage.  Nathan decides to rescue her himself and embarks on a violent, rescue mission.  Nathan has one advantage over the hardened criminals; he can't feel any pain.

There will be spoilers below.  My non-spoiler review is that this movie is a lot of fun, but has some structure issues and I don't love the 3rd act, but this is still worth seeing.

What Works:

I love Jack Quaid.  He's just so charismatic, even when he's playing a villain.  In Novocaine, he gets to play the most likable role I've ever seen him in.  Nathan is super relatable and easy to root and throwing in Quaid's chemistry with Midthunder, this is a movie that's very easy to get invested in.

The premise of this movie is fantastic and used very well.  Nathan gets f****d up in this movie frequently.  Very early on, he puts his hand into a deep fryer to grab a gun, which obviously destroys his hand.  We get some awesome makeup on his deep fried hand that Quaid wears for the rest of the movie.  It doesn't bother the character, but I love that the filmmakers deep fried his hand for so much of the movie.  It's a lot of fun watching this character sustain brutal and painful injuries, but never really react to them apart from comedic reactions.  The gore is over-the-top, but the film manages to stay very funny.

Finally, the action is really solid.  Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder and the actors who play the bank robbers; Ray Nicholson, Conrad Kemp, and Evan Hengst, bring a lot of physicality to their roles.  They all own their fights and make them brutal to watch.  If this were a more generic, action movie, these would still be really solid fights with plenty of gnarly moments.  The comedy keeps this movie lighter tone-wise, but that doesn't make the action any less impressive.

What Sucks:

This movie has quite a few supporting characters who aren't as well developed as they could have been.  We get Nathan and we get the robbers, but some of the other characters could have used a little more.  Sherry, Nathan's best friend, Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), and the police officers investigating the case (Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh) all could have used some more screen-time for us to get to know them.  These are all talented actors, so the extra screen-time would not have been wasted and it would have made the audience care about them more.

The script also has some issues, particularly with a twist that happens in the movie.  We learn that Sherry is actually in on the robbery.  That's actually a really solid twist and I wasn't expecting it at all, I just think the movie gives it to us too early.  I would have liked to have learned it near the end when Nathan learns it.  Having us know it, but not Nathan, for such a long stretch of the movie lessens the impact when Nathan finally does learn the truth.  It also could have changed the structure of the 3rd act and the ultimate resolution of the movie, which might have been an improvement.  I don't fully buy that Nathan would still want to be with Sherry after all that.  Maybe instead of ending up with her, he could have just learned to fully live his life regardless of his condition.  Or maybe he could learn to bro down more often with Roscoe.  Another option would be to develop Sherry more over the entire movie and make her side-switching a little more believable.  There were multiple paths to take here with this twist and I don't think the movie gets it quite right.

I didn't love the 3rd act overall.  It still had some fun stuff, but it lacked the energy of the earlier action beats.  Like I said, if the structure had been changed around with the twist and the supporting characters been developed more, it could have made things more interesting.  Maybe make Sherry the main antagonist?  I'm not sure, but the script and this 3rd act could have used a rewrite to make it stronger.

Verdict:

Novocaine is really fun watch thanks to a great premise, excellent action, and a really likable performance from Jack Quaid.  I think the supporting characters could have used more development and the structure of the story, along with the 3rd act, could have used some more work.  But I still had a great time watching this and Novocaine has definitely got it going on.

 7/10: Good