“Wow, that hurt! That one hurt the most!” Nate shouts. He’s lying, of course: Nate isn’t in pain. He just needs the guy twisting the arrow embedded in his leg to think he’s in agony.
Nate Caine has a rare genetic condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis. It’s a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for Nate to feel pain or temperature. And for most of his life, it’s been a hindrance.
Nate’s furniture is covered in tennis balls so he won’t slam into the corners and bruise himself without noticing. He puts ice in his coffee because otherwise he could scald his throat and never know the difference. Every three hours, his watch alarm goes off, reminding him to use the bathroom so his bladder won’t explode. And the poor guy has never tasted pie, because lacking physical sensations, he could bite off his own tongue while chewing solid food.
Sadly, that’s nothing compared to the emotional toll of his condition. When kids found out Nate couldn’t feel anything, they gave him the nickname “Novocaine” and took to beating him up. They never felt bad using him as a human punching bag since they knew he couldn’t feel any of it.
What they didn’t realize was that Nate could absolutely feel it: Deep down, Nate was in agony because he knew he’d never make friends, he’d never know love, and he’d most likely die by the time he turned 25.
But then Nate met Sherry.
Sherry didn’t mind that Nate lacked physical sensation or that he carried some emotional baggage. She had some scars of her own, in both the literal and figurative senses. And for the first time in Nate’s life, he begins to feel things he’s never felt before—good things.
That’s why Nate is here now, pretending to be in anguish. This guy and his cronies robbed the bank where Nate and Sherry work. When police arrived, the thieves took Sherry as hostage. And Nate, not entirely understanding his own actions, chased after them.
It’s a foolhardy plan: These guys are clearly well organized. But for the first time in his life, Nate’s inability to feel physical pain isn’t a hindrance.
On the contrary, it sort of makes him a superhero.
Nate is a decent fellow. When he learns an elderly man (whose wife recently passed away) will be unable to pay a loan in time, he tells the man he’ll delay the paperwork until after the holidays, giving the man time to collect benefits from his wife’s Social Security and preventing him from losing his house. Later, that man returns the favor by giving Nate a safe place to patch himself up.
That’s not all Nate does, though. Obviously, he goes to rescue Sherry, which is driven by his love for her. But he just as easily could have let the police rescue her—which is exactly what detectives tell Nate after they realize what he is doing. However, Nate knows that hostages are most likely to be killed within the first few hours of being taken. So, he completely ignores his own sense of self-preservation (which is admittedly much higher than the average person’s given his disorder) and bravely risks his life to save Sherry.
Additionally, when Nate first injures a bank robber, he offers the man first aid advice. The guy ignores it, but it’s a nice gesture. Nate also takes the time to apply a tourniquet to an injured cop’s leg, delaying his pursuit of the robbers but saving the cop’s life. Elsewhere, a detective decides to help Nate pursue the bank robbers instead of arresting him.
Throughout the film, we also watch a nice little friendship develop between Nate and Roscoe, Nate’s online gaming buddy. Initially, Roscoe has no desire to assist Nate in his heroic endeavors—not because he doesn’t support Nate but rather because he recognizes that what Nate is doing is illegal. Now, we’re not condoning any illegal actions (and neither is Roscoe, for that matter), but Roscoe ultimately decides to help Nate, risking his own life in the process. “What are friends for?” Roscoe says. It delights Nate, who has never had a true friend before.
Someone acts as a double agent throughout the film, but that character ultimately decides to do the right thing despite significant risk and legal jeopardy.
A woman says that group therapy has helped her and several others.
After the double agent decides to do the right thing, another robber calls it “fake remorse” and asks if the double agent thinks it will save that person’s soul.
Sherry and Nate hook up. Clothing is removed; we see Sherry in a bra, straddling and kissing Nate. The camera then cuts to the next morning with Nate in bed. Sherry’s not there, but it’s implied they had sex.
Nate’s shirt is unbuttoned to reveal a full body tattoo. Sherry displays some semi-erotic photographs at an art show that depict people who are partially undressed.
The amount of grueling, torturous and sometimes just flat-out gross things that happen to Nate in this film is enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine. (And close-ups of oozing wounds and broken bones don’t help.) Nate is shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, burned and choked. His fingernails are pulled off with pliers. He’s hung upside down by a snare trap. No doubt he endures several concussions from all of the head trauma he receives. He loses a tooth. Someone tries to crush his head beneath a car. And Nate’s wrist is broken so badly that bone sticks out. But that’s nothing compared to what Nate does to himself.
Nate boils his hand in hot oil to retrieve a gun. Lacking pen and paper, he tattoos the address of a bank robber into his hand. He purposely punches glass, embedding the shards into his hands to act as a sort of brass knuckles (glass knuckles?). Nate breaks his own thumb to escape a pair of handcuffs. And he even shocks himself with defibrillator paddles.
Luckily, being so prone to accidental injury, Nate is pretty well-versed in first aid. But then, watching Nate administer first aid to himself is rather gruesome, too. He uses a box cutter and pliers to remove a bullet from his arm, then seals the wound with super glue. He resets his thumb after purposely breaking it. And he douses his hands, which are absolutely shredded from the glass knuckles incident, with hand sanitizer to prevent infection.
But Nate gives as good he gets, which means the bad guys take their licks, too. They’re similarly shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, burned and choked. The guy on the receiving end of Nate’s glass knuckles gets shards stuck in his eyes. Nate uses a tattoo pen on a guy’s throat to nasty effect. One of the bank robbers winds up on the receiving end of defibrillator paddles. Another is sprayed with bear mace. And Nate even uses his own injuries (such as a protruding broken bone) to inflict damage.
Sherry, unfortunately, gets pretty beaten up, too. During the robbery, one baddie hits her in the face before holding a gun to her head. Later in the film, Sherry fights back, but she’s hit in the head several more times, thrown into a pile of bricks and even choked.
Two people are shot point-blank in the head, killing them. Several cops and security guards are shot and killed by the robbers. A detective almost bleeds out from a gunshot wound to the gut, but she survives.
One of the bank robbers has booby-trapped his home; Nate, Roscoe and another robber are all injured by these traps. The criminals threaten many people and use violent force. A few people are knocked unconscious. One thief tries to torture Nate, who feigns pain to buy Roscoe some time.
We see several high-speed chases, one of which ends in a crash.
A detective kicks Roscoe to the ground to handcuff him, prompting Roscoe to request a “no-kicking policy.”
This film also touches on the topic of self-harm. We see several scars on Sherry’s stomach from self-inflicted wounds. She tells Nate that she attends group therapy. And she explains to him that some attendees (like her) cut themselves, while others have suicidal thoughts.
Nate recounts how as a child, he once impaled his foot on a nail and didn’t realize until after his shoe had filled with blood. We see him burn his hand badly after spilling some hot coffee. Characters play a violent online video game.
[Spoiler Warning] When it’s all said and done, Nate is told that he suffered a heart attack, brain hemorrhage, massive blood loss and several third-degree burns in the course of trying to save Sherry. He winds up in a full-body cast with multiple skin grafts, and he has to be put in a medically induced coma for a few weeks, too. But he survives and makes a full recovery.
We hear the f-word 70 times and the s-word 30 times. There are also multiple uses each of “a–,” “a–hole,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–mit” and “h—.” God’s name is misused 20 times, thrice paired with “d–mit.” Jesus’ name is also abused about 10 times.
Nate uses epi-pens several times to give himself a boost of adrenaline.
People drink at a bar. Someone jokes about sobriety.
Nate explains to Sherry that the average life expectancy for anyone suffering from his disorder is 25 years old. A former classmate is rather meanspirited toward Nate upon realizing Nate has outlived this prognostication. In retaliation, Sherry secretly asks a bartender to put ghost peppers in the classmate’s drink, causing him to cough and sputter uncontrollably.
Sherry tells Nate that she was in foster care until she was adopted at 12 years old. However, neither her experiences with foster care nor with adoption were positive, and she used to self-harm for this reason (though therapy has helped her).
Someone vomits. People lie. Someone slips handcuffs and pickpockets a cop. People commit crimes throughout the film.
A man with a swastika tattoo on his neck also displays a “Don’t tread on me” flag in his tattoo parlor. Nate is irritated to learn that one of the bank robbers is a doomsday prepper.
You know, the creators of action flicks tend to get pretty carried away with all the fake blood. There’s a suspension of disbelief when Captain America gets flung around like a rag doll and still says he could do this all day. (I mean, Sam Wilson didn’t even take the super serum!) So when the hero of your film can’t even feel pain … well, I suppose you’re going to capitalize on that. Or at least the companies making all of that fake blood will.
Nate goes through a lot. I understand that this guy can’t feel any of the things that are happening to him, but some of the injuries he endures weren’t even necessary—like when he tattoos a really simple address into the palm of his hand since he doesn’t have any other writing materials around.
The egregiousness of his injuries leads me to wonder if people who have actually been diagnosed with this condition, known as CIPA, might find this whole film a little insensitive or trite. But that’s beside the point, I guess. It’s Hollywood, and the filmmakers are clearly buying their fake blood wholesale.
Speaking of egregious, let’s move on to this film’s language problems. Upwards of 70 uses of the f-word alone, not to mention other profanities and harsh misuses of God’s name. Sexual content is blessedly kept mostly offscreen, but we still see some pretty sensual stuff before the camera cuts away.
And all of that content actually points to another concern that potential viewers should be aware of: Sherry has self-harmed in the past. During the aforementioned intimate scene, she shows her scars to Nate. And there are hints that she may have been abused while in foster care and after getting adopted at 12 years old. Sherry seems to recognize now that such self-harm is a bad thing; but it could be a trigger for anyone watching who struggles with that issue, too.
All in all, Novocaine is pretty much just a gorefest—the kind that makes you squirm and groan in disgust—that tries to make light of a lot of violence.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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