American audiences who have only known Michelle Yeoh for her roles in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Wicked, and maybe even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, will never understand just how furious an action star she was back in her Hong Kong prime. The closest we’ve gotten to that version of her is in The Surgeon, a blast of a good time that allows Yeoh to cut through bad guys like a hot scalpel through soft flesh…literally. This is one of the most enjoyable action roles for Yeoh in quite some time, but it also won’t be for those who get squeamish from watching an episode of The Pitt.
The Surgeon is the brainchild of writer/director Roshan Sethi, a certified physician who co-created the long-running medical drama The Resident. If I was this guy’s patient, I would have some serious concerns because there’s some sick, twisted stuff racing through this guy’s brain. Yeoh plays Eliza, a world-class surgeon who, after 40 years of excluding everything else from her life, is quietly being forced into retirement. No more need to keep that insurance policy on those golden hands of hers.
Any hope to live a quiet life of gardening and sewing is interrupted when she is kidnapped by gun-toting thugs, who force her to do surgery to save the life of their leader, Sean, played by Martin Freeman. She operation itself is pretty heinous, with entrails and guts being pulled out by the armload, enough to make even the toughest of Sean’s henchmen gag. But Eliza’s not an idiot. She knows the general rule for this sort of thing, as seen in literally thousands of action movies with megalomanical baddies, that once she’s done with the operation they wll kill her anyway.
It isn’t long before Eliza has decided to fight back, going against her personal belief to “embrace the inevitable” when death looms. These guys have fucked with the wrong doctor. Cranking up the Thin Lizzy soundtrack in her own head, Eliza goes wild with a scalpel, turning the bad guys’ internals into mincemeat. The action is cleverly staged to show what Eliza sees; the bones breaking, the joints shattering, a key organ ripped to shreds. It’s nothing for her to stab a guy in the pelvis and literally split him in two, or to poke another in the nose so hard that his brain literally leaks out.
Clocking in at just 92-minutes, The Surgeon is lean and brutal. It’s a fantastic role for Yeoh that shows once again that she is one of the most well-rounded actors around, as credible when beating up a bruising Russian thug as she is performing complicated surgery. While Freeman makes a solid villain, this is Yeoh’s movie and it’s one that her fans will have to be in a coma to miss.
