Quaid's leading role in Novocaine feels like a natural continuation of these genre-bent everymen. He plays Nathan Caine, a mild-mannered assistant bank manager who has congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), a genetic disorder that impacts his nervous system to the point that he can't feel pain or temperature.

How far would you push your body if you couldn't feel any pain? Well, when it comes to love, the answer for Nathan Caine in "Novocaine" is: pretty dang far. Hitting theaters on Friday, "Novocaine" is both a rom-com and an action film,

Novocaine could have been written by a 12-year-old, and I’m not sure I mean that pejoratively. It’s a riff on superhero stories, but it’s been thought up with a whiff of dopey plausibility: The film’s protagonist,