Houston-bred, Palestinian American comedian Mo Amer is finally returning to Netflix, as the second and final season of his acclaimed, award-winning dramedy Mo will hit the streamer in a few weeks.
A trailer for the new season dropped yesterday, showing Amer’s Palestinian-refugee protagonist Mo Najjar stuck across the border and fighting to get back to Houston before his family’s asylum hearing. “Maybe just come to terms with the fact you’re Mexican now,” Matt Rife’s embassy flak tells him in the trailer.
Rife isn’t the only familiar face you’ll see in the upcoming season. Rapper/fellow on-the-rise Houstonian Tobe Nwigwe returns as Mo’s best buddy. We’ll also get guest appearances by Houston rapper Slim Thug, veteran YouTuber Liza Koshy, and Red Rocket star Simon Rex, who plays the new love of Najjar’s on-again, off-again girlfriend (Teresa Ruiz).
Produced by indie powerhouse A24, Mo received raves in its first season, as well as a Peabody Award for Entertainment and a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Series — Short Form. Amer was also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, for Best Lead Performance in a New Scripted Series.
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.
