Novocaine is built on one of those only-in-the-movies high concepts. The film’s tagline sums it up in five words: “Nathan Caine can’t feel pain.”
That’s not some sort of pun or metaphor about his cold heart; literally you can punch or kick or stab or shoot the guy, and he won’t even flinch. Sure, Nathan Caine bruises and bleeds like anyone else would — and you won’t believe what his hand looks like after he reaches into a deep fryer to retrieve a gun — he just doesn’t feel those bruises. Sometimes he doesn’t even notice he’s bleeding until long after he’s been hurt.
In the film, Nate (Jack Quaid) must take action after his new girlfriend (Amber Midthunder) is kidnapped by a trio of bank robbers while the police are incapacitated. Nate has no fight training, has never fired a gun, and generally has no experience doing anything outside of playing video games and filing paperwork. He’s a total nerd. But because he can’t feel pain, nothing stops him in a fight short of a knockout blow to the head.
A man with a borderline superpower that allows him to shrug off mortal injury? It’s too ludicrous to be real, right?
Wrong.
READ MORE: The Worst Action Movie Cliches Ever
Nate says that he has a “genetic disorder” called CIPA — short for “congenital insensitivity to pain, with analgesia.” While it is exceedingly rare, this actually is a real medical condition. According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong), “extremely rare genetic disorders are some of the causes for the condition” in which “cognition and sensation are otherwise normal” except for the fact that the sufferer is incapable of actual suffering, while they otherwise deal with “no detectable physical abnormalities.” That sounds like Nate to the letter.
Believe it or not, Nate’s insular lifestyle, driven by his paranoia that he will accidentally injure himself, is also accurate to congenital insensitivity to pain. As is his line where he notes that the average life expectancy for people with his condition is 25. That’s because recognizing pain is a crucial defense mechanism for the body. If you don’t know you are hurt you might not stop the source of the injury, compounding the problem.
For example, when you involuntarily flinch after accidentally touching a hot pan, that autonomic response prevents you from seriously burning your hand. Thanks to his disorder, Nate doesn’t flinch. That might come in handy in a desperate fight with a bank robber but it also leaves him with third-degree burns. More broadly, people with congenital insensitivity to pain often die very young because they don’t realize how hurt (or how ill from a disease) they are until it’s too late.
Even the detail that Nate doesn’t eat solid foods because he is worried he will bite his tongue off is accurate! As Wikipedia notes…
Because children and adults with the disorder cannot feel pain, they may not respond to problems, thus being at a higher risk of more severe diseases. Children with this condition often sustain oral cavity damage both in and around the oral cavity (such as having bitten off the tip of their tongue) or fractures to bones.
How rare is this condition? Congenital insensitivity to pain “has been estimated to have a worldwide incidence of approximately 1 in every 25,000 births.” That’s 40 people out of every million, which sounds pretty high for a disorder I had never heard of before until Jack Quaid had it in a movie where he performs surgery on himself.
While those numbers are general estimates, there are exceptions. At one village in Northern Sweden, there have been 40 different reported cases of chronicle insensitivity to pain. 40 in one village! That’s unbelievable. Guys, I just had a great idea for a Novocaine sequel.
Movies We Love Because They’re Always On Cable
There’s something fun about surfing through TV channels later at night and happening upon something you’ve never seen before.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
Credit: Source link
