Directed by Roshan Sethi, the 92-minute thriller casts Yeoh as an abducted surgeon who fights back with a scalpel, and Deadline's first review calls it a gorier cousin of John Wick.
Michelle Yeoh's first outright leading role since she won the Best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once three years ago had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, and by Deadline's account, it does not hold back.
The Surgeon, written and directed by Dr. Roshan Sethi (A Nice Indian Boy), casts Yeoh as Eliza, a surgeon who has spent forty years operating by what the film calls a monastic code of medicine and is finally ready to retire. Early on, an insurance company calls to ask if her hands still need covering. The answer, apparently, is no.
That retirement lasts about as long as it takes for a gunman to show up. Eliza is abducted and ordered to operate on Sean, a gravely ill crime boss played by Martin Freeman, while his henchman Cole (Yuri Kolokolnikov) watches to make sure she does not botch it, or worse, refuse. She has one condition. Thin Lizzy, played loud, while she cuts.
What follows, according to Deadline's review out of the festival, turns the operating table into a battlefield. Eliza figures out fast that the same hands that have kept people alive for decades can just as easily end a life, and the film apparently spends its back half showing exactly how, using anatomy itself as a weapon. Deadline's critic went as far as calling it more graphic than any hospital drama on television right now, crediting prosthetics supervisor Suzi Battersby for practical effects that do not cut away.
A tight, bloody runtime
At 92 minutes, the film does not overstay its welcome, something Deadline flagged as one of its strengths. The review credits fight choreographer Laurent Demanioff for turning Yeoh's real martial arts background, the same one audiences saw in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, into the film's combat sequences, with Yeoh reportedly using her character's surgical knowledge to disable attackers rather than just outfight them.
The verdict from Deadline is not universal praise across the board. Freeman gets credit for building an actual character out of Sean, while the rest of the criminal crew are described as fairly stock villains. But the critic is unambiguous that Yeoh is the reason to watch, calling her performance both physically convincing and emotionally grounded as a doctor confronting exactly what her skills are capable of when turned the other way.
The cast also includes Laurie Davidson and Joseph Mydell. Producers on the project are Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Diarmaid McGrath, Tim Headington, Lia Buman, Neil Shah, Steve Klinsky, Adam Kolbrenner, John Schoenfelder and Russell Ackerman, with WME handling international sales.
No distributor or release date has been confirmed since the Toronto premiere. Given the reaction out of the festival, that is unlikely to stay unresolved for long.
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