Image courtesy of IMDb
Hello, everyone.
For my Christmas review this year, I decided to cover what ended up being one of my new favorite Christmas action movies, and it came out in the first half of the year.
As for what makes this a Christmas movie, we’ll get to that, folks, don’t worry.
For now, though, let’s go over one of the most overlooked movies of the year, and that is Novocaine.
The story follows Nathan Caine, the assistant manager at a bank. He may seem like a regular guy, but he has the inability to feel pain*. His coworker, Sherry, becomes attracted to him, but he’s initially hesitant due to both his condition and not having been in a relationship before.
That night, they go to a bar together, and then Nathan takes Sherry home with him, so all seems to go well for him.
Unfortunately, the following morning, a group of robbers dressed up as Santa break in and kidnap Sherry, prompting Nathan to go after them.
What Worked: First of all, what works right off the bat is the concept itself: A regular guy who can’t feel pain going after kidnappers to get his girlfriend back. The story itself may not be original, but the concept around it is.
What also makes it work is the cast, with three cast members in particular being noteworthy.
Our protagonist is played by the always charismatic Jack Quaid, who chances are a fair amount of my readers may recognize from Scream 5, Companion, or even The Boys. In fact, his condition here makes him seem like he would fit right in on that show.
The love interest here is played by the equally excellent Amber Midthunder, who is very quickly starting to prove herself following the success of Prey, the best Predator movie since the original… up to that point, anyway.
Here, she has very believable chemistry with Jack Quaid, and she’s also very sympathetic on her own, especially later on in the movie.
For an action movie like this, what can make it really stand out even more is having a compelling antagonist to match the protagonist.
Here, we have Ray Nicholson for that, and much like Jack Quaid, he has so much charisma as well. You can tell he definitely got that from his Dad. After making a name for himself with Smile 2**, his next big movie is an action movie. For me, you can’t really go wrong with that.
The other standout was Jacob Batalon, best known from the MCU Spider-Man films, as Nathan’s friend Roscoe. Simply put, he is hilarious in this.
Now for the main thing that I was eager to talk about when I got to covering this movie.
Even with a protagonist who can’t feel pain, there are still some very brutal moments in this.
With those come very creative kills, some of which were shown in the trailer, like the kitchen fight. It’s not quite as insane as the one in something like The Raid 2, but it still doesn’t hold back. You’ll probably never look at deep fryers the same way again, I’ll put it that way.
The craziest one comes at the end of the movie, and I obviously won’t spoil it, you just need to see it for yourself. I guarantee that every time you see it, it’ll make you wince. I would know from experience. The first time, I saw it at an early screening (one of the most fun ones I’ve been to), and then the second time was rewatching it for this review.
Before I get to my issues (I really only have two big ones), it’s time to address what makes this a Christmas movie to me.
For example, Christmas trees show up several times in the movie. Christmas miracles are mentioned. “Merry Christmas” is spoken. Nathan wears a Christmas-themed tie at one point.
They also play “Silver Bells” in one scene. For me, as long as they have at least one Christmas song, it qualifies. I could go on, but for my readers, I’ll continue on to the issues I have, as much as I love this movie.
What Didn’t Work: There are at least a couple predictable moments, for one thing.
The bigger one I have, though, is that this is yet another movie with the most unsubtle song choices ever***. For example, they play “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. at the beginning of the movie. I’m not saying this for every song in the movie, I’m giving the Christmas music a pass, considering the setting.
The song choices are so blatant that they somewhat overwhelm the score, co-composed by Lorne Balfe, who gave us the best rendition of the Mission: Impossible theme with Mission: Impossible - Fallout.
Overall: Despite those couple issues, Novocaine is so much fun to where the thing you’ll mainly feel is pure joy from such an adrenaline rush of a movie.
It has so much rewatchability thanks to the performances and the action alone.
On top of that, upon watching it again for this review, I found it to be a satisfying Christmas-themed action movie to where I feel it’s sufficient enough to hold me over for Violent Night 2 next year.
Speaking of which…
Great offerings came this year
But upon us are new flicks
So I hope to see you here
In 2026.
*This is also a real thing, by the way. For evidence of that, among the screenings they held for the movie before it came out, they had some for people with this condition. I have to give them respect for going the extra mile to do that.
**Full Disclosure: I have not seen either of those two movies, but I hear surprisingly good things about them, especially the second one.
***That’s not the first time I can say that for a movie from this year.