In recent times, there has been a great deal of stylish and choreography-focused action films. John Wick was the most popular of which a decade ago but there have been recent efforts. Dev Patel’s excellent Monkey Man was just last year and it proved that there was a lot of life for this genre of action film. It is generally an easy formula. Get a likeable actor, like Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde or Keanu Reeves in John Wick and create excellent action setpieces to put them in. The story of these films is rarely the highlight and what we really want to see is how can this person take on an entire army of henchmen in the coolest way possible? Novocaine is like a lighter version of all of this and from the marketing, I assumed it would be poking fun at this kind of genre. To an extent, it is just that. Yet the new gimmick it uses is really drained of its novelty by the end. Novocaine does not really do much stellar to breathe life into this subgenre, but it is still a solid entertaining watch.

Novocaine follows Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), an assistant manager at a bank that leads a relatively boring and safe life. He has safe-proofed everything around him in his apartment and office because of his rare condition. Caine can feel no pain, which is instantly revealed to us after his crush, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), spills hot coffee on his hand. She takes him out to dinner to apologise where he tells us about his condition and how he cannot eat solid foods for fear of biting his tongue off without knowing. After finally trying some pie offered to him by Sherry, Nathan gets confident that he can live a bit more dangerously. He and Sherry have a fling and the day afterwards he is on top of the world. Except this on this day of all days, there is a brutal robbery at the bank wherein Sherry is kidnapped. Nathan disregards his own safety and goes off to save her.

Without the little twist in the formula, this is a very standard setup for this kind of film. This does become a slight issue when the film absolutely hounds the audience with this concept. Every single joke and kill riffs off the fact that he cannot feel pain and as much as a lot of it is unique and funny, it does get exhausting that is all this brings to the table. This is primarily the problem through the second act and thus makes this portion of the film a bit dull. However, everything surrounding it does work well. The first act is actually a really strong start as we are slowly introduced to his condition, not constantly reminded of it, and we are given some solid character setups for Nathan and Sherry. Nathan clearly wants to start living properly and Sherry was one of the first to encourage him to do so. It then makes perfect sense as to why he is so head over heels to make sure she is okay. The third act is hard to talk about without spoiling but it finishes these characters off neatly and satifyingly. The second act does have fun points and the action is solid but there is not much else other than its central gimmick.

There is clearly an element within this film that is poking fun at these high octane action films. You could watch the John Wick quadrilogy and probably almost get to triple digits counting the amount of times Wick should be dead or seriously injured. Novocaine is riffing of of this because in this kind of film, pain is clearly not a factor anyone is worried about for the protagonist. Of course, unlike many films of similar ilk, this film does have frequent gags, even if the stakes are quite high. It recognises its own ridiculousness, which has to be appreciated. Jack Quaid really helps sell this too because he is full of charisma and it is nice to see a more comedic side of him.

Now Novocaine may not completely rock your world but it is still entertaining all the same. Even if there an absurd amount of jokes surrounding the fact he can’t feel pain, there are still fun uses of it. Whether its him casually just breaking his thumb to escape handcuffs or tattooing an address on his hand because there isn’t a pen around, it is clearly just having a bit of fun. The action is not anywhere near stellar but it is still largely fun and that can generally said about most elements of the film. You might forget about this film a few days after watching it but it is simply an inoffensive fun ride that will keep you entertained.