10 Best Movies Like Novocaine

Not to be confused with the 2001 comedy that you forgot starred Steve Martin, “Novocaine” is an unexpectedly rip-roaring action-comedy starring Jack Quaid of “The Boys” fame. Once again, Quaid stars as an unlikely hero and deadly vigilante, an everyman hero who gets into way more trouble than he expected. His name is Nathan Caine, and he happens to have a rare condition that means he cannot feel pain. 

Raised in solitude, Caine has had anything but an ordinary life, and struggles making friends outside of online video games. While working as the assistant manager at a local bank, though, Caine meets the equally charming — and equally troubled — Sherry Margrave (Amber Midthunder), and the pair spend a spontaneous night together. But when a group of bank robbers dressed as Santa Clauses barge in the next day and hold him at gunpoint, Caine is forced to watch helplessly as Sherry is abducted during the getaway. Caine — who is totally impervious to pain — must go it alone to rescue Sherry, taking on violent thugs in an increasingly dangerous and awkwardly madcap mission.

Quaid is pitch-perfect as the bumbling Caine, a man who is just trying to save the girl, but who doesn’t always realize what he’s gotten himself into. Comical levels of violence, with hilariously creative fight scenes, are the real reason to watch. And in that sense, “Novocaine” isn’t alone: There are plenty of movies out there that will capture the same sense of brutality and absurdity, and we’ve put together a list of the 10 best.

In some ways, “Nobody” is the polar opposite of “Novocaine,” with the film’s hero Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) the antithesis of Nathan Caine. Rather than a bumbling, awkward paper-pusher, Mansell is a former special ops mercenary and contract killer with skills so lethal that he is essentially a one-man army. But he’s also something of an everyman just trying to live a proper, humdrum life, much like Caine, and the violence he brings to bear against his criminal adversaries is just what you want if you liked “Novocaine.”

“Nobody” comes from the makers of “John Wick” and has a similar premise: A former assassin is retired to a quiet life, but a home invasion leaves him vengeful. While trying to suppress his violent urges, Hutch allows a pair of thieves to take more than his valuables, but his dignity as well. But when he realizes they may have stolen his daughter’s favorite bracelet, the dam in Hutch’s head that’s holding back his worst impulses breaks in spectacular fashion, leading to a deadly quest for justice that suddenly pits him against a ruthless drug kingpin.

The plot is fun and the characters are a riot, but like “Novocaine,” what you really come for is the action: Brutal fight scenes that are so raw and uncompromising that you can feel every punch like it’s coming through the screen and into your face. The blood flows like water, the bullets fly like rain, and by the end, you’ll be out of breath. As good as action movies get, “Nobody” got a sequel in 2025 that we labeled “joyously fun” in our review.

With a title like “The Man Who Feels No Pain,” you can guess where this one shares similarities with “Novocaine.” And when you watch the trailer, you might even think that the Jack Quaid film was a remake of this Bollywood action-comedy. Like “Novocaine,” the film centers on an ordinary man who has a rare condition that prevents him from feeling pain, and he uses his invincibility (of sorts) to fight crime. 

“The Man Who Feels No Pain” follows Surya (Abhimanyu Dassani), a young man who was raised in seclusion by his grandfather. During his lonely youth, Surya becomes obsessed with martial arts movies, but is estranged from his childhood crush Supri (Radhika Madan) at a young age after a violent incident. The pair are reunited years later, though, when they discover that their favorite movie hero, Karate Mani (Gulshan Devaiah), is embroiled in a deadly plot orchestrated by his twin brother Jimmy (also played by Devaiah). With a shield against pain, and years of martial arts training from watching countless hours of action movies, Surya sets out to stop the evil Jimmy and save Mani with the help of his old friend.

In some ways, “Novocaine” is really the movie to recommend for fans of “The Man Who Feels No Pain,” as the Jack Quaid film possesses plenty of the same levels of silliness. But, of course, it always works both ways, and if there’s anyone who can appreciate the wanton wackiness of Bollywood action movies, it’s fans of “Novocaine.”

There’s no revenge mission in “Bullet Train,” but what the film lacks in a common story with “Novocaine,” it more than makes up for with balls-to-the-wall levels of action, fight scenes, and bloody violence. Rather than an everyman, the hero is a shadowy assassin known only as Ladybug, played by superstar Brad Pitt. He doesn’t have an unusual ability that allows him to shrug off physical attacks, but he does suffer from crippling anxiety, and that’s one reason he’s trying to put the killing game behind him.

This fast-paced adventure begins on a train, where Ladybug is in the middle of what he thinks is going to be a rather easy assignment. But Ladybug isn’t the only mercenary aboard, and before long, we meet fellow assassins Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), the Wolf (Bad Bunny), the Hornet (Zazie Beetz), and the Prince (Joey King), who all want a piece of the action. Suddenly, Ladybug’s job just got a lot more complicated and he finds himself fighting off murderous attacks left and right while trying to snag a mysterious suitcase that everyone wants to get their grubby little paws on.

To its benefit, there isn’t any kind of complicated plot in “Bullet Train.” It’s instead a simple heist film, and while it has few good twists and turns, the story really just serves as a framework for some of the best action you’ll ever see on a set of train tracks.

When it comes to stories about an ordinary person who decides to fight crime with comical levels of excessive violence, the place to start is “Kick-Ass.” The 2010 film, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular hero, tells the story of an average teenage boy who fights crime in a homemade costume. And while the hero is a bit younger than Nathan Caine, Taylor-Johnson gives a very Jack Quaid-like performance as a vigilante who is in way over his head, but willing to take a farcical amount of punishment to stop the bad guys.

The hero in “Kick-Ass” is Dave Lizewski, a nerdy high schooler whose obsession with comic books and superheroes inspires him to design a colorful crime-fighting costume and superhero identity. Though he doesn’t have much success at first, his exploits turn him into an online sensation, which only makes him bolder. This puts him on the radar of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), a costumed vigilante who fights crime on the streets with his pre-teen daughter Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz), and together they set out to take down a notorious crime boss named Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

A down-and-dirty action comedy, “Kick-Ass” is far from the kinds of Marvel and DC superhero movies you might be used to. Fun, funny, and disgustingly violent, it’s the perfect antidote to the more saccharine, kid-friendly comic adventures — and it was a big hit, turning Johnson and Moretz into stars and earning a 2013 sequel, “Kick-Ass 2.” There’s even talk of a reboot.

Nathan Caine is a man who discovers his inner hero after learning he has a hidden superpower of sorts. The same situation plays out in the sci-fi drama “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The film stars Hong Kong superstar Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan as a wife and husband who discover that there is an infinite multiverse, and they go on a reality-warping adventure that sees them confronting unseen dangers around every cosmic corner.

Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang, a beleaguered woman eking out a meager living running a laundromat. She’s dissatisfied with just about every aspect of her life, from her difficult relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) to her troubled marriage to Waymond Wang (Quan), a soft-spoken wimp who wants a divorce. But on one seemingly ordinary day, Evelyn discovers that there are an infinite number of parallel realities, and in one of them, she’s learned how to jump between them by transferring her consciousness into her alternate selves’ bodies. Now, she’s recruited for a mission to stop a mysterious villain named Jobu Tupaki, who wants to destroy all realities.

Like “Novocaine,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is more than an action movie. It’s the story of a hero who must face up to who they really are and call on a strength they didn’t know they had to save the ones they love, punctuated by inventive action sequences and clever uses of kung-fu violence. But with a sci-fi twist, it’s also a bit of a mind bender, giving it a unique flavor that sets it apart from everything else on this list.

“Hardcore Henry” is an unusual recommendation for an article of the best movies like “Novocaine.” Because on the one hand, the movie isn’t great — it’s badly written and poorly acted — but none of that means it’s not a heck of a lot of fun. Just like “Novocaine,” the film moves from one blood-soaked action sequence to another, and the violence is equally as ludicrous, if not more so. But we’d be remiss not to mention the movie’s biggest gimmick — that it’s filmed entirely in the first person.

“Hardcore Henry” literally revolves around a mysterious man named Henry, who is awakened in a lab following a procedure that has turned him into a cyborg. A doctor named Estelle (Haley Bennett) claims she is his wife, but before she can tell him any more, armed men working for a villain named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) invade the lab, and while Henry manages to escape, Estelle is taken prisoner. Soon, Henry discovers that his new cybernetic parts will kill him if he doesn’t provide them with frequent recharges, and he’ll need plenty of them if he’s going to fight his way past Akan to rescue his wife.

Much like Nathan Caine, Henry is a man on a mission to rescue the woman he loves, while doing whatever he can to stay alive as his own body seems determined to kill him. If you ever wondered what “Novocaine” would be like if it were a first-person shooter, “Hardcore Henry” is the answer.

It might sound odd at first, but the best movie to watch if you loved “Novocaine” is a Marvel superhero film. Sure, Nathan Caine isn’t a superhero, and his ability to feel no pain is hardly a superpower, but in “Deadpool” we have a hero who can sustain lethal levels of damage – he can be run over, drowned, crushed, stabbed, shot, electrocuted, poisoned, frozen, burned, and asphyxiated, and within moments he’ll stand right back up, not a scratch on him. 

This hero is Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), a fast-talking mercenary who volunteers for an experimental procedure that gives him an unlimited healing factor. But when his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is kidnapped by Ajax (Ed Skrein) — the very man who turned him into a superpowered merc with a mouth — he’s forced to deck himself out in a superhero costume and recruit some superhero pals to get her back. Thankfully, there are two X-Men waiting to help, and together with Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), Deadpool must track Ajax down and save Vanessa … and his sex life. A passion project for Ryan Reynolds, “Deadpool” is gruesomely violent, hysterically funny, and among the best action comedies of all time.

We can certainly recommend the 2006 cult classic “Crank” for fans of “Novocaine,” but while it does share many of the same hallmarks, there’s really no other film like it. A non-stop orgy of violence and adrenaline-pumping madness, the Jason Statham film embraces its crazy like no other movie ever made, save perhaps for its even more insane sequel, “Crank: High Voltage.” 

Like “Novocaine,” the film is a tongue-in-cheek action thriller, with the comedy often coming from just how over-the-top the violence can be, as it features moments so eye-popping that you’re forced to question whether what you’re watching is real. In the film, Statham plays Chev Chelios, a hitman who wants to walk away and start a new life. But one wild morning, Chev awakens to discover that he’s been poisoned and will have just one hour to live — unless he can find a way to keep his adrenaline pumping. What follows is a non-stop barrage of action as Chev tries desperately to stay alive while on a mission of vengeance. A living high-caliber consecrator, Chev will do anything he can to keep up his adrenaline, whether it’s committing crimes, having wild sex, or jolting his system with jumper cables. 

Nothing is sacred in “Crank,” which, like “Novocaine,” is a violent revenge movie that is definitely not for the faint of heart. It won’t win any awards, but as an unapologetically absurd action romp, it’s one for the history books.

If “Novocaine” had given Nathan Caine a team of vigilantes around him, it might have been something like “The Suicide Squad,” another comic book movie that features underdog heroes on a mission.  And with James Gunn behind the camera, you know it’s going to be a first-rate action movie, a side-splitting comedy, and full of enough raunchy jokes and gut-bursting violence to satisfy any fan of “Novocaine.”

Though a sequel to the similarly titled “Suicide Squad,” “The Suicide Squad” doesn’t require any homework. It begins with government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) recruiting a group of superpowered villains for a clandestine mission to a South American country. The roster includes a pair of sadistic sharpshooters, Peacemaker (John Cena) and Bloodsport (Idris Elba), plus a dimwitted human shark (Sylvester Stallone), the gloomy Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), the troubled Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), and the wild-eyed Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). But when they arrive on a remote island to stop a deranged scientist (Peter Capaldi) from unleashing a giant monster on the world, they uncover evidence that there’s more going on than stopping a madman. 

Full of colorful and eccentric characters, each more psychotic than the last, “The Suicide Squad” is a superhero rollercoaster ride with more blood than you’ll find in a “Rambo” movie. There’s even a similar twist to the one in “Novocaine,” with a plot that involves a shocking betrayal you won’t see coming. And just like “Novocaine,” it’s more than jokes that will make you laugh, with absurd levels of violence that will have you streaming tears.

After watching “Novocaine,” you probably have a hankering for some more abject craziness. Well, if you’re looking for absurdity, violence, and a hero who has no idea what he’s doing, then “Guns Akimbo” is the movie for you. If “Hardcore Henry” is “Novocaine” as a first-person shooter, then “Guns Akimbo” is the third-person version, featuring another mild-mannered actor turned Hollywood action hero. Following his stint as Harry Potter, actor Daniel Radcliffe seems to have made it his own personal mission to pick the weirdest roles he can find, and “Guns Akimbo” gives him one of his oddest yet.

In the film, Radcliffe plays a bitter online troll and video game developer named Miles, who spends his days mocking fans of a deadly underground fighting competition called Skizm. But when he draws the ire of the man behind the competition, Riktor (Ned Dennehy), he finds himself abducted and forced to fight to the death as part of the contest himself — after having a pair of massive handguns surgically bolted to his hands.

The fact that one of the villain’s henchmen is named “F*ckface” should tell you exactly what kind of movie this is: A fast-paced, no-holds-barred shoot-’em-up that revels in its ridiculousness. An off-kilter and off-the-wall action comedy that evokes movies like “Deadpool,” the crossover with “Novacaine” is obvious: Big fight scenes, crazy stunts, buckets of blood, and a premise so silly you can’t help but love it.