‘NOVOCAINE’ Rated R

On occasion, you may learn something at the movies that you did not know existed in real life, only because it sounds too fantastical to believe. That happens to be a rare genetic disorder in the comedic action film “Novocaine.”

There won’t be a need for anesthesia in this movie because the titular character (given his nickname) has a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), which means a person has the inability to feel pain. A trip to the dentist for a root canal won’t induce anxiety.

Jack Quaid’s Nathan Caine, a mild-mannered assistant manager at a San Diego credit union bank suffering from CIPA, does his best to live a risk-free life. That means all sharp corners of furniture at work and in his apartment are covered with tennis balls.

A liquid diet is required because eating solid food might cause him to bite off his tongue. The alarm on his watch goes off every three hours as a reminder to not let his bladder explode. When not at work, he spends all his time playing video games with a friend he’s never met in person.

At work, he rarely socializes until he takes notice of new teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder), when she accidentally scalds his hand with a cup of hot water. Sherry takes a liking to him such that he starts to come out of his shell. They even go out on a date, which seems like a first for Nate.

That Nate becomes infatuated with Sherry, not least for the reason that she’s pretty with a vivacious personality, but as well for her persistence by prodding him to take a bite of her delicious cherry pie at lunchtime.

When they go out that evening to a bar, Nate encounters an arrogant bully from his high school days who gave him the nickname of Novocaine because of his condition. When the tormentor fails at hitting upon Sherry, Nate starts falling hard for her.

Getting close to Christmas, Nate demonstrates his good-guy qualities by helping an elderly widower and small business owner defer on making payments until after the holidays. He’s a candidate for good karma, and he’s really gone to need it.

The day after the date with Sherry, three robbers dressed as Santas and toting automatic weapons storm the bank, demanding the safe to be opened. As the leader of the group, Simon (Ray Nicholson) is a certified trigger-happy psycho who kills the bank manager (Craig Jackson).

After forcing Nate to open the vault, the robbers take Sherry hostage once the police arrive. A shootout ensues with several police officers gunned down. With the cops out of commission, Nate steals a squad car to pursue the bad guys.

The consequence of this act causes the sardonic police detective Coltraine (Matt Walsh), along with his partner Mincy (Betty Gabriel), to assume that Nate is part of the robbery gang.

With the help of his video game buddy Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), Nate tracks down one of the robbers named Ben (Evan Hengst), who had escaped separately from Simon and his brother Andre (Conrad Kemp) when they abducted Sherry to their hiding place.

As part of his sleuthing, Nate ends up in a brutal encounter with tattoo artist Zeno (Garth Collins), a physical behemoth who could break him in half. Genuity on the part of Nate using his bloody fists embedded with shards of glass gets the better of his adversary.

One of the best scenes is when Nate ends up in a booby-trapped house and gets ensnared in a bear trap that has him hanging from the ceiling like a side of beef at the butcher shop, only to get saved by Roscoe.

With Nate impervious to pain, “Novocaine” leans heavily into bloody violence with a protagonist willing to go to the ends of the earth to save his damsel in distress. In doing so, Nate suffers beatings so severe that even John Wick wouldn’t bounce back.

Nate doesn’t react when his leg is impaled by an arrow or a spiked medieval ball slams into his back. Sticking his hand into boiling oil to retrieve a handgun is no biggie. He laughs when he’s tortured by pliers pulling out fingernails, but that’s just a bit too much for a squeamish audience to witness.

The choreography of fight scenes, from fists and kicks to throwing knives and frying pans, is thrilling in a cartoonish manner, but it does go unnecessarily over the top. Still, it is fun if you are willing to go with the premise.

“Novocaine” thrives on its ingenuity of brutal damage and mayhem. Nate keeps it all going with the occasional use of an EpiPen as his lovesick devotion to Sherry is his motivation to keep recharging his energy.

You may grimace at all the pain inflicted on the titular hero, but “Novocaine” is oddly enjoyable as a quirky, offbeat comedic thriller with a nice turn by Jack Quaid in the lead.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.