It's certainly not the most-talked about feature of the latest People cover (on newsstands Friday) featuring Sandra Bullock, her divorce and her new super secret baby boy.
But Julia Robert's familiar face shoved into the space of a postage stamp (okay, not quite — but it's small) in the top right corner has got at least my tongue wagging.
This issue was set to be People's annual World's Most Beautiful People issue, with Roberts taking the coveted top spot. But she was reduced at the last minute to make space for Bullock's bombshell and a secret baby-centric double-issue. Rumor has it that no one even warned Roberts, and she had to find out the same way us peons did.
Word on the street (Perez) is that America's sweetheart was bumped for America's Sweetheart 2.0 because Life & Style, the that pub broke the whole Jesse James scandal, had the scoop on Bullock's undercover adoption. Her people had to move fast to break the news on their own terms (and snag a profit for it), so offered the exclusive to notoriously celeb-friendly People.
If you're the rag mag issue-buying kind, tell us: Will you be picking up People for more on Bullock's baby, or for the Most Beautiful list?
Stories featuring ordinary people faced with extreme situations have proven to be popular in film history. They range from Hitchcock movies like Rear Window to Brian De Palma’s Blow Out to the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. Recent films like Nobody and Love Hurts have put a twist on the sub-genre, featuring protagonists whose mild personas and everyman looks hide violent abilities.
The new film Novocaine is a further twist, as the ordinary man at its center has an ability that he’s never fully tapped before. Nate Caine (Jack Quaid) is a mild-mannered assistant bank manager whose life is boring by design, as he has a disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. Being unable to feel pain, traumatic events that would stop most people in their tracks don’t faze him at all, sometimes to his detriment.
Soon after making a rare connection with another bank employee, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), the bank is robbed and Sherry is kidnapped. Nate decides to pursue the kidnappers to try to rescue Sherry, setting in motion a series of events that a person without his condition would find unbearable. However, his inability to feel pain turns him into a kind of unstoppable machine, determined to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal.
That synopsis of the film, directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and written by Lars Jacobsen, makes it sound like a serious action film, but it’s actually an action comedy that finds a unique angle for its hero. The filmmakers portray Nate’s condition, if not completely accurately, then with an air of plausible realism. The laughs come not at his expense, but in reaction to how he repeatedly uses his ability to his advantage.
The result is a violently graphic film that rivals ones like John Wick in what it showcases. Knowing he can’t get hurt, Nate has no issue putting himself in harm’s way, whether it’s burns, gunshot wounds, impalements, and more. The amount of damage done to him could make the film into a kind of live-action Looney Tunes, but the filmmakers manage to walk the line between hilariously ridiculous and eye-rollingly stupid.
The romance between Nate and Sherry provides a nice through-line for the story, with a few good twists and turns along the way. The lone big misstep of the film is Nate’s friendship with Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), one developed through online gaming that turns into real life by necessity. It takes a long time for them to get any scenes together, with their interactions ultimately feeling unnecessary.
Quaid seems to be hitting his stride as an actor, starring in The Boys on Prime Video and in the recent Companion. He does a great job of never overplaying this role, keeping Nate as a regular person despite what he’s able to do. Midthunder is hit-and-miss, as the story takes her character through a yo-yo arc. Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh do serviceable work as detectives tracking Nate, delivering exactly what’s expected of them.
Novocaine is much better than it probably had a right to be, with some solid storytelling, some intense action, and a fantastic lead performance by Quaid. Humor and graphic violence don’t always go hand-in-hand, but this film finds a way to combine them in memorable ways.
