Revenge of the nerd in brutal, bloody but fun Novocaine

It’s action stations at the movies this week, with the fun and furious Novocaine, and the Stath in vintage form in A Working Man, writes Leigh Paatsch.

It’s all about the heroes on the big screen this week, whether they be superpowered nerds, gritty vengeful soldiers, or a half-man, half-dog …

NOVOCAINE (MA15+)

Jack Quaid as “Nate" in the fun and furious action thriller Novocaine.

Directors: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen (Villains)

Starring: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Matt Walsh

★★★½

He’s as comfortably numb as they come

What if Clark Kent had muddled through the entirety of his life so far not realising he is actually Superman?

This is the one question asked by Novocaine, a busy, fizzy and ultra-frenetic action movie that takes an interesting, if irrational, route in arriving at a final answer.

Nate Caine (played by Jack Quaid) is a weapons-grade nerd. During working hours, he is a mild-mannered assistant bank manager. At all other times, he leads a solitary, no-mates-no-dates existence, the monotony of which is only diminished by marathon gaming sessions.

Nate’s primary grounds for living as a shut-in are medical: he suffers from (according to Google) a real and rare neurological condition known as CIP.

Short for Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, CIP sufferers such as Nate are unable to recognise any situation where they have met with physical harm.

What Nate does not know – but will soon come to learn – is that his particular version of CIP is the equivalent of a superpower. For only-in-a-movie reasons never addressed by Novocaine, Nate also enjoys the ability to endure and recover from calamities that would kill most people on the spot.

Jack Quaid gets brutal in Novocaine.

Nate’s journey to embracing and exploring his incredible indestructibility is kickstarted by the sudden possibility of an office romance with a fetching fellow bank employee named Sherry (Amber Midthunder).

However, less than 24 hours after sharing a first kiss and more, there is a daring robbery down at the bank. The heavily armed thugs have taken more than just money: they have made off with Sherry as a hostage to guarantee a perfect escape.

With the authorities neutralised by the sheer brutality of the heist and a subsequent shootout, the previously meek Nate mans-up, commandeering a cop car to go after the crooks who have stolen his new girlfriend.

It is at this point Novocaine finally shows its true colours as an all-stops-out action movie, and the mayhem unleashed by Nate’s solo rescue mission is as relentless as it is both amusing and astonishing.

Sure, the violence is graphic and the physical injuries suffered by our hero are incrementally gruesome: Nate’s running repairs of bullet wounds with a staple gun and some superglue are about as easy on the eye as it gets here.

Nevertheless, the experience as a whole is saved by a winningly wicked and unpredictable series of action sequences, and also Quaid’s deceptively endearing performance.

Novocaine is in cinemas now

A WORKING MAN (MA15+)

Jason Statham is under the hammer in A Working Man. Picture: Dan Smith/Amazon Content Service

★★★

General release

Sure, it’s just another Jason Statham beat-’em-up, but there is just enough substance to A Working Man to cover for its lack of style. This angsty revenge movie actually boasts an unusual production pedigree in that it was originally written by Sylvester Stallone as a miniseries to showcase another side of Statham’s talents. As we all well know by now, that was a miscalculation on old Sly’s part: there is no other side to Jason Statham. He was put on the screen to dispatch bad dudes to a deserved demise (or at the very least, the nearest hospital). The bad dudes here are either full or associate members of the Russian Mafia, which means there can’t be any argument at any point that these guys had it coming.

Jason Statham as everyday construction worker Levon Cade. Picture: Dan Smith/Amazon Content Service

Nevertheless, A Working Man takes the time to work up some justification for the one-man war Jase will be waging. Turns out the everyday construction worker he’s playing was once a crack commando for the British Royal Marines, which makes him the logical candidate to aggressively spearhead a search-and-rescue mission on behalf of a mate whose daughter has vanished for Russian Mafia-adjacent reasons.

Statham rarely lets his surly standards drop in any movie, and the same applies here.

DOG MAN (G)

Dog Man, adapted from Dav Pilkey’s books, is fine family fun.

★★★½

Selected cinemas

It was just under a decade ago that author-illustrator Dav Pilkey started cranking out Dog Man books, based on a minor character from his ultra-successful Captain Underpants series. However, with his sales record now approaching the 70 million mark in terms of copies sold around the world, Dog Man is now a major character in his own right.

Not too much time is wasted on origin-story business here: in case you don’t know, the title character is an experimental hybrid of police officer (hence the two legs and two hands) and police dog (hence the canine cranium and vocabulary). All available time is rightfully directed towards accumulating as much silly, surreal and sort-of-exciting fun as possible while exploring Dog Man’s ongoing problems with a criminally-inclined cat named Petey.

While the animation style is a little rough around the edges, the jokes, pacing and characters are bang on target throughout. Parents assuming this is another cartoon to suffer through will be in for a very pleasant surprise. Starring the voices of Pete Davidson, Ricky Gervais.