‘Novocaine’ is a smart high-concept comedy which, it feels, could have worked in a range of different genres. The protagonist is a young man, Nathan (Jack Quaid), who works in a bank and has a congenital condition whereby he is impervious to pain. So, when the bank is hijacked by robbers, and Nathan’s love interest is taken hostage, he has a unique set of skills with which to go after the criminals. This film was released on the same day in the UK as the Jason Statham revenge thriller ‘A Working Man’ with which it contains many parallels, both of which necessitate us having to suspend our disbelief at a hero who maims, tortures and kills without experiencing any side effects.

‘Novocaine’ though works for a different set of reasons as at least Statham’s construction worker has led a double life as a military assassin, and we can imagine that he has the right set of skills to get him out of trouble. With Nathan Caine on the other hand, we are presented with a nerdy character who seems oblivious to what he is able to achieve, whereby any punishment that he is administered leads him to discover, and be genuinely surprised by, the resources available to him. And, as with ‘A Working Man’, Nathan is in pursuit of a young woman who has been taken against her will, and his agenda is one of rescue.

Neither film, though, gives us a damsel in distress dynamic, and Nathan, despite having honourable intentions, does not entirely know enough about the object of his mission to know exactly what he is letting himself in for. This gives the film an edge which imbues the film with the sort of tropes at the heart of film noir, where not everyone can be taken at their face value. Indeed, Nathan is the hero who does not fully understand exactly what he is letting himself in for, but the journey proves as illuminating as the destination as, along the way, Nathan starts to learn more about himself and his potentialities. So, when he realizes that he may have been the pawn in someone else’s game it doesn’t change the fact that he has a recognizable character arc.

The film could though have been mined more fully for its possibilities, as the action and the comedy here are not exactly state-of-the-art. It is not the first time we have seen a Santa-wearing bank robber. The underrated crime thriller ‘The Silent Partner’ from 1978 in which Christopher Plummer robs a bank in a shopping mall dressed as Father Christmas is a little known gem, and ‘Novocaine’ seems to be paying homage to that film by giving us a hero both out of his depth and canny enough to know when he is holding the cards. The trailer suggested that Nathan might be another variant of the Marvel Universe-related trope where nerdy characters end up saving the world. Yet ‘Novocaine’ is not set in a comic book world, even if its real world underpinning requires us to suspend our disbelief a little too often.