Novocaine
Review: Jack Quaid plays Nathan ‘Nate’ Caine, a 30-year old man who can’t feel pain. When the woman he loves is kidnapped, he decides he will do whatever it takes to save her. And all that makes for a very fun watch. There were a couple times I got a little queasy, but it was fun nonetheless. There were so many things to enjoy about this movie. All the different settings and set pieces for Nate’s progression through the story was great. The fight scene in the kitchen. Great. The fight scene in the tattoo shop. Great. The fight scene in the booby trapped house. Great. And there were a lot of very memorable action shots & stunts which is exactly what is needed. In action comedy films like this, sometimes the dialogue can fall a little on the wayside as it’s not the focus of the film, but I think this film actually had good (& mostly believable) dialogue. Also, they did a great job with the camerawork making it so that even though Nathan didn’t feel the pain that was being inflicted, we could feel the effect it was having on his body. I am going to keep this review spoiler free, so I’ll just say the twist got me. I didn’t see it coming at all and the trailers did a good job keeping it hidden so good on them. I’m not going to say I’d recommend this, only because I don’t know how good you are with blood and whatnot, but if you handle that stuff fine, then I would absolutely recommend this film. One of my favorites of the year so far!
High: The hands down (or hands fried) highlight of this film was Jack Quaid. He was so effortlessly & charmingly dorky and played such an endearing character. Hot take, I am totally pro-nepotism and I think Jack Quaid is perhaps the King of the Nepo-Babies right now. He’s just so great both onscreen and in real life, and he was absolutely the reason I was seated in this movie.
Low: My only low is that I’m excited for some PG & even PG-13 movies to come out that I can go see because I’ve been watching a lot of very brutal R-rated movies recently. I’ve enjoyed my watches, but my stomach doesn’t enjoy it quite as much. Not a low because I expected this, but there were genuinely a couple of scenes I physically covered my eyes during.
Rating: 8/10
