‘The Surgeon’ Review: Michelle Yeoh Plays a Kidnapped Doctor Trying to Outwit Her Captors in Deliriously Fun Genre-Bender

Roshan Sethi has a résumé that could make the most accomplished among us feel like underachievers. His three previous features include the thoroughly charming 2024 rom-com A Nice Indian Boy . Two months ago his novel, The Simp, a funny Hollywood satire, was published. He was the co-creator of the Fox series The Resident . And as if that’s not enough, for a couple of months a year he still works as a radiation oncologist at a Boston hospital.

He puts all those experiences to good use in The Surgeon , a genre-bending swirl that is part The Pitt (but gorier), part tense crime thriller, part action movie and part midnight movie, all infused with witty touches. It is wildly entertaining. Related Stories Movies Anthony Ippolito on Speaking to Sylvester Stallone Before Filming 'I Play Rocky': "Very Overwhelming and Daunting" Movies Mahershala Ali Reveals He Was "Yearning" to Perform Action On-Screen Before Filming 'Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother' The Surgeon The Bottom Line Ready for cult-classic status. Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece) Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Martin Freeman, Laurie Davidson, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Joseph Mydell Director and writer: Roshan Sethi 1 hour 32 minutes

As clever as Sethi’s screenplay is, the film’s greatest asset is Michelle Yeoh as Eliza Lim, a recently retired surgeon who is kidnapped by criminals and forced at gunpoint to operate on one of their colleagues. No one else could have brought the same serene presence, quiet intelligence and flair for action, a combination that is ideally suited to the character. Sethi’s film is perfectly in sync with Yeoh’s strengths.

The film swiftly establishes Dr. Lim’s character in a few brief scenes that chart her single-minded dedication to her job and the boring, empty retirement she has reluctantly entered. The Surgeon isn’t a character study, but we instantly know who that character is.

Out of nowhere, it seems — but actually for reasons revealed much later — she is abducted and finds herself in an abandoned hospital, surrounded by men with guns. An operating room is ready for her, and the patient’s face is covered. The operating scenes are not for the squeamish, but it’s worth covering your eyes to get to the real action. Lim realizes the kidnappers have no reason to keep her alive after the surgery, so she has to outwit them using her mind, medical knowledge and a few hidden scalpels.

Sethi often holds the camera on Yeoh’s face, expressive even at its most passive. Lim speaks softly as she proves the thugs are no match for her. “You can stop pointing that gun at me,” she tells one of her minders after the surgery. “I’m an old woman, half your age, half your weight. There’s nothing I can do to you.” Part of the fun of watching is that we can guess that line is a ruse, but we don’t know what she’s planning.