Novocaine No Pain (2025) – Painless

Released: 13th March
Seen: 9th August

Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) is a rare medical condition that basically makes the person who is born with it (as it’s a genetic disease) unable to feel pain. On the one hand, this sounds like a great thing, a life without pain sounds good in theory, but in practice, it means that it’s easy to do things like bite off sections of your tongue or burn yourself without ever noticing you’re doing it. It’s the kind of medical condition that’s a favourite of strange medical shows because what show isn’t going to love a story about someone who doesn’t feel pain. It doesn’t seem to get much time in the sun when it comes to cinema, though, until Novocaine No Pain (which is what the movie Novocaine has been titled in Australia, for reasons that make no sense) which is possibly the first CIP Action Comedy and it’s just generally fantastic.

Novocaine No Pain begins with Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), a bank worker who has CIP and just tries to go about his life as best he can. He purees all his meals so he doesn’t accidentally bite himself, his home is basically babyproofed so he can’t hurt himself and he drives several miles under the speed limit to ensure he will not even slightly hurt himself. He has a self-imposed bubble that he doesn’t let anyone get in so he doesn’t risk doing damage… until he meets Sherry (Amber Midthunder), a bank teller who has been trying to get his attention for a while. Finally, after a meeting at a bar and a fun first date together, Nathan and Sherry start a relationship just in time for bank robbers to come take over the bank and kidnap Sherry. Nathan quickly gives chase to try and save Sherry, using his inability to feel pain as a superpower to help him take on the robbers that have taken his girlfriend.

A huge amount of credit must be given to Novocaine No Pain for taking the time not only to explain what CIP is, but also to treat it as more than just a joke. The opening sequence around Nathan’s apartment shows how he has had to adjust his life, setting up tennis balls on every corner to cover up every potential hazard, and even setting alarms every three hours to remind himself to go pee and avoid bladder issues. It’s all done to hammer home the fact that this is this character’s lived reality and how much it changes his day-to-day life so that when he has little breakthroughs like eating a solid piece of pie, it means something. It also means the big action scenes are more thrilling, we know that this character can’t feel pain but is doing real damage to himself and it gives the scenes that follow a real emotional tension.

Those scenes are absolute jaw-droppers in terms of action. When you have a major character taking part in a fight that can’t feel pain and knows it, you get to do some wildly crazy creative fun things like just have them dig around in a deep fryer for a gun or stab someone with a knife that’s been jammed into their hand and it’s all so gloriously performed and filmed by this top notch stunt team and camera team who keep the energy high impact and really make sure you feel every single punch being thrown, even if the main character can’t feel a thing. It’s also just a stunning trick to believably sell that these injuries are having an impact (I don’t care if you can’t feel the pain, an arrow to the knee will fuck with your ability to move on some level) but aren’t actually painful. A great comedic source is just Nathan being so shocked at what’s happening, even though he can’t feel it, which honestly never gets old. 

What helps a lot of Novocaine No Pain keep from letting that joke get old is that it’s coming from the eternally charming Jack Quaid who just carries the film with an effortless ease that I don’t think anyone else could’ve even come close to doing. He can sell all the action, all the comedy and most importantly the emotional punches. I never thought seeing someone taking a bite of a cherry pie was going to have an emotional resonance but when you have someone setting up that they can’t eat solid food because they might bite their tongue off and then go through a gamut of emotions just giving it a try and experiencing a piece of pie for the first time, it’s wild how impactful that can be and all of that impact is because of the powerhouse performance by Jack Quaid. Now there are obviously a ton of great performers in this film, from Prey’s Amber Midthunder as the love interest, to Ray Nicholson (yes, son of Jack) as a bad guy and everyone is absolutely bringing it. It’s a cast giving their all to this goofy idea and making it work but the film doesn’t work without Jack Quaid, let’s just get that straight.

When Novocaine No Pain is firing on all cylinders, there really is no other action film quite like it. It has a ton of genuine heart and soul that is hidden behind elaborate, comically over-the-top violence that gets wilder and wilder. Honestly, the only real problem is that sometimes the film does go a little too far over the top for the purposes of a joke and it almost makes it unreal. Yes, the film is trying to present CIP as some kind of superpower but it doesn’t need to be heightened as much as it gets in some sequences. Those scenes are still amusing and well presented, but they do change the tone of the film in ways that I really don’t think they needed to. It’s also just a little bit longer than it needs to be, nearly 2 hours for this kind of film is indulgent as hell and cutting a solid 10-15 to get the pace up a little would do a world of good, but those are minor nitpicks that don’t really matter that much in the long run.

Novocaine No Pain is one of the more fun action films in recent years. Its unique setup is well used and creates a fun and engaging story that will have you laughing, cheering and occasionally welling up in surprising moments of genuine emotion. It’s got a great cast, some of the most insanely fun action scenes I’ve seen in a while and a real special energy that very few other films can even come close to. It’s a painlessly joyful time that should have been a much bigger hit than it was, but maybe it’ll get a second life and become the cult hit it deserves to be.