by Victoria Alexander
Minor Spoilers below
The best way to see this is in 4DX. Hey, these two “nepo” actors (Quaid and Nicholson) have real talent. Both have worked their way through many minor roles instead of using famous parents for starring in movies.
Zamora the Torture King is the stage name of Tim Cridland, a friend of mine. He performs painful feats as entertainment. His stage show includes fire walking, sword swallowing, body skewering, sleeping on nails and electric shock. According to an article I found on Cridland on ABC News from 2006, titled “No Pain – and Without a Warning System” they interviewed Dr. Joshua Prager, director of the Center for the Rehabilitation of Pain Syndromes at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was amazed when he saw the pain-defying Zamora. Prager said, “He stuck a spike through his face -- through his mouth and it went right through his chin. It was fascinating.”
Zamora, experiencing what indeed is agonizing pain, explains his “performances” are a feat of his mind. Or, is he one of the rare people born without the ability to feel pain?
During the Hindu Thaipusam festival, devotees undergo extreme piercing rituals, and it's common to see participants with piercings that appear to bleed little or not at all. Throughout the world, religious piercing rituals are widespread.
I was told by a tattoo artist that, if you know the right people, body suspension – hanging by hooks - takes place in the underground of Las Vegas.
I saw NOVOCAINE at the Regal Red Rock 4DX theater. My very first 4DX experience. You enter at your own risk. The only thing I worried about was the spraying of water. I turned off the water button. I thoroughly enjoyed 4DX.
Not feeling pain is the very clever premise of this ultra-violent action movie. NOVOCAINE’S Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) was born with this genetic anomaly. Because of this disability, he was bullied and beat up by schoolmates and his parents had to isolate him fearing he would injure himself without knowing it. Nathan was uneasy with people but did become an assistant manager of a bank.
Too bad Nathan didn’t find an extreme piercing and body suspension community. He would have been a star!
When we meet Nathan, he is awkward and friendless but did manage a rather impressive job at a bank.
The problem with Nathan is, while he can sustain an enormous amount of injury without feeling pain, he is meek and has no athletic ability. Anyone else would have been starting bar fights and challenging gangs for sport or extra cash. Imagine how impressed Tyson Fury would have been boxing a buffed-up Nathan, who can take his powerful heavyweight punches. Nathan has one “friend,” a video gamer named Roscoe (Jacob Batalon). He has never met Roscoe. Batalon is terrific.
Nathan has taken an interest in new bank teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder). This being the MeToo era of Hollywood, not only does Sherry do the flirting but aggressively invites herself to Nathan’s apartment. After the evening of lust, Nathan is in love. The hell with HR protocols!
One day three guys dressed as Santa Clauses come into the bank and announce a robbery. The bank manager refuses to open the safe and is killed. The robbers take Sherry as a hostage and kill police officers when escaping.
The robbers are terrifying (Conrad Kemp, Evan Hengst and Ray Nicholson). Nathan, blinded by love to rescue Sherry, commandeers a police car and goes after the two fleeing cars. Since Nathan ran off, the detectives believe he is in on the robbery.
Nathan was shot in the mayhem and goes to a hardware store to dig out the bullet and sew up or glue the raw area closed (I wasn’t watching this gruesome part). Nathan finds one of the robbers and has a pretty violent fight in a restaurant kitchen. Using his inability to feel pain, Nathan keeps getting up and accidentally kills the robber.
Nathan finds where one of the robbers lives and goes into the house. When the second robber worries where his brother is, he decides to go to the house which is creatively booby-trapped. Nathan already had triggered every cruel trap. When the brother arrives, he finds Nathan hung upside down. He begins to torture Nathan. It is a very exact science the method of torture this brother enjoys. Of course, Nathan does not feel his fingers being chopped off.
And then there is the final confrontation with Simon, the “leader” (Ray Nicholson). I am not going to reveal the ending, but it is good. Very good.
Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and written by Lars Jacobson, NOVOCAINE is a fully packed action movie. While Quaid, who seems to have suddenly arrived as the star of NOVOCAINE, has been acting since 2012. Quaid plays Nathan with the appropriate mildness and surprise as he learns to use his disability to fight killers. The real stand-out is Ray Nicholson. He has charm and shows real pleasure in his role. Nicholson also has many IMDb credits, but his role in NOVOCAINE is the one that will be his showcase into a starring role career. Or, a career as a handsome, sadist villain with a sensitive side.
