Jack Quaid plays a man who can’t feel pain in “Novocaine.”

A lack of feeling might be a condition plaguing directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen as well. The pair clearly is going for video game mayhem over anything resembling real human interaction with this occasionally funny but mostly gory action film.

Jack Quaid plays Nathan Caine, a man with CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis), which apparently is a real thing. He can’t feel physical pain, which sounds kind of cool, but it also means he could bleed out if he steps on a nail and is unaware of the shoe filling with blood. He could die of any one of an assortment of injuries that the average person would seek immediate medical attention for while he remains blissfully ignorant that it’s happened.

It’s made Nathan extremely cautious and largely reclusive outside of going to work every day as an assistant bank manager. He lets down his guard with a female coworker, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), who calls him a “superhero” when he tells her about his condition at lunch. He meets her at a club later that evening, and she spends the night with him at his apartment.

How a guy who has to set an alarm to pee so he knows to empty his bladder can feel sexual pleasure is one of the many, many questions that it’s best not to ponder while watching. “Novocaine” is impervious to logic as well as pain.

When three violent Santa Claus-clad bank robbers kill the manager, empty the safe and take Sherry hostage, Nathan starts acting like a superhero, chasing the bad guys in order to rescue the damsel.

Up until the bank robbery, “Novocaine” could be mistaken for a rom-com. But once the beatings and the killings start, strap in, power up and let the game commence.

From that point on, Nathan is a video game character with seemingly endless lives. Watch him endure abuse from physically superior opponents, momentarily pause to repair / recharge and then repeat on a new level.

Berk and Olsen embrace those roots. There’s one shot of a musclebound, bearded tattoo artist that I swear looks more like really, really well done computer animation than an actual human being (kind of like the online theory that Roy Kent from “Ted Lasso” was a CGI creation and not played by a real human).

The directors skillfully stage some elaborate action sequences in tight spaces, such as a restaurant kitchen, a tattoo studio and a house with a “homemade” security system.

But they also rely heavily on grisly torture scenes, delivered by the leader of the bank robbers (an appropriately menacing Ray Nicholson) or that boobytrapped home. The movie would be better if there was more, “Hey, look at this,” and less, “Try not to look away from this.”

“Novocaine” works as well as it does because of the innate likability Quaid brings to Nathan. Quaid, the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, has his dad’s smile, but on him it’s more disarming than mischievous or lascivious. This Quaid is cut from the same cloth as Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart. “Novocaine” isn’t the type of movie that gives him a chance to prove whether he’s capable of those kinds of performances, but he humanizes a character who’s mostly treated like a crash test dummy for 110 minutes.

The rest of the cast are mostly storytelling devices or props to be beaten or deliver a beating with the exception of Jacob Batalon, who plays Roscoe, a gaming friend who Nathan calls upon for help.

Betty Gabriel is fine as the sympathetic cop chasing after Nathan and the bad guys, but Matt Walsh (“Veep”) is squandered playing a jaded cop who doesn’t spout a line that isn’t a cliche.

There’s a version of this story that could have been a little more Looney Tunes and a lot less “Saw” in its approach — more slapstick and less impaled by stick. I would have liked that movie more.

But one should review the movie that was made and not the one they’d prefer. This version will play best with gamers willing to leave the house for a couple hours and turn the controller over to Berk and Olsen. They know how to steer the action, and they have a main character who is worth rooting for until it’s game over, or in this case, until the credits roll.

If you go …

WHAT: “Novocaine”

STARS: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Conrad Kemp and Evan Hengst.

STORYLINE: A man who can feel no physical pain goes to herculean efforts to rescue his new romantic interest after she’s taken hostage in a bank robbery.

DIRECTORS: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen

RATING: R for strong bloody violence, grisly images and language throughout.

GRADE: C