The Surgeon

As fun as it is thrilling, The Surgeon stars Michelle Yeoh as a gifted doctor who steps down after an accomplished career, only to return to the operating room at gunpoint. In her newfound retirement, she is abducted by a criminal gang (led by Martin Freeman) that forces her to work on a member with a life-threatening medical condition. Thanks to her extensive knowledge of human anatomy and decades of experience with a scalpel, she fights back, equally capable of healing and wounding with her gifts of precision and dexterity. Appearing in two Official Selections at this year’s Festival (the other being Bai Xue’s It’s My Time) after winning the Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Yeoh proves that she’s here to stay.

After his 2025 romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy, director Roshan Sethi draws from his unique background as a physician to deliver a pulse-pounding ride that pays homage to genre films, from kidnapping thriller to surgical drama to home invasion. Elevating the action sequences is a killer soundtrack featuring delightful needle drops — including Thin Lizzy, our protagonist’s music of choice in the operating room. With equal attention to constructing breathless fight scenes and fleshing out character histories, this “scalp ‘em up” signals the return of the classic 2000s action blockbuster.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: extreme violence, scenes of surgery, accident trauma, coarse language, crude content, mature themes