What to know
- Michelle Yeoh delivers a riveting performance as a retired surgeon who is kidnapped and forced to perform a life-or-death operation for Russian mobsters at an abandoned hospital.
- The film begins with the character’s obsessive dedication to her work, which leaves her isolated and hard for audiences to connect with until the story develops her later.
- The tense and suspenseful plot showcases the character’s resourcefulness and bravery, using her surgical skills both to heal and to defend herself as she navigates captivity and betrayal.
- Key details and callbacks—like hidden surgical tools and a lesson about suturing—play major roles in the climax, rewarding viewers who pay close attention to the film’s subtle setups.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This review contains spoilers for the film The Surgeon.
If you’ve seen the beloved musical Wicked and you’re as chronically online as me, you know all about the “Madame Morrible, flip it around… Wicked Witch!” trend.
But unlike her role as the “Wicked Witch,” aka Madame Morrible, Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh is playing someone with a good heart and the protagonist in The Surgeon.
The TIFF Centrepiece film focuses on Michelle Yeoh, who plays a skilled surgeon who gets kidnapped to perform one last operation shortly after retirement – and this thriller really kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.
At the start of the film, Yeoh’s character comes across as very work-focused. Work was always on her mind. In the cafeteria, she sewed a grapefruit, then hilariously took a bite out of it.
The movie started off with a cold vibe. All we knew was she was married to her work. Nothing about her family or anything that personified her. We didn’t even know her name.
That’s what I didn’t like about the movie; I couldn’t get attached to the character or the movie until I could really understand her character – which arrived way later on.
Yeoh’s character seemed distraught after retiring, shown in a proud picture working in the hospital, attending a book club, and barely/awkwardly communicating with a possible love interest, as she spent her days doing embroidery.
As she went about her day, she weirdly made a toast, cutting off its crusts in a surgical manner – speaking more to her work obsession. Now, I’m all against crusts on toast, but that’s just weird…
But finally, the film picked up – she passed out and woke up in the abandoned St. Mary’s Hospital.
That’s when men who looked like they were involved in a Russian mob showed her brain scans and told her she must operate – or die.
Despite being literally kidnapped, Yeoh’s character showed no fear, no tears, and didn’t even scream.
She hilariously requested a Thin Lizzy song during her operation, which kinda uplifted the dramatic mood, and proceeded with the operation.
But I admired Yeoh’s character for her bravery and strategic thinking. At some point, she used her metal tray to see who was in the observation deck and noticed her ex-coworker, who we find out set her up to perform this surgery.
Then, she bluffed to Cole, one of the threatening men, that if he didn’t give her her phone and his gun, the man she’s operating on would die within four minutes.
The ex-coworker was stressing in the observation deck. Ben, an armed chaperone, was also panicking, but Cole called her bluff, knowing that as a surgeon, she wouldn’t genuinely do anything to harm her patient, and shot her near her leg, where she had to remove the bullet and staple the wound closed herself.
She was then forced to continue and finish the surgery. Post-surgery, the anesthesiologist cried and pleaded to be saved, but ended up getting shot to death.
That’s when Yeoh remained calm, claiming she was half Ben’s size and weight so he could relax, but she used medicine as her weapon to save herself.
What I enjoyed about the movie was the imagery in the scenes, which showed and described the bones and what Yeoh’s character was doing as she did it. So, she slit his wrists so he couldn’t grab his gun, hilariously cracked a few of his bones, and managed to get away from him.
Another evil man tried to attack her in the chapel, where she used a scalpel, which was ironic, as it’s usually a tool to help people, as a weapon, once again.
This time, she used the scalpel to break his pelvis, which had paralyzed him and allowed her to escape.
But this time, she was trapped by both Cole and Ben (who caught up). So, she said she had to see her patient. When she met the patient, everything clicked: it was someone she had previously rejected, stating the surgery wouldn’t help his case. But to stay alive, she said the next 12 hours were crucial, and she needed to stay by his side.
In the car to an unknown location, she managed to get out of her wrist ties and threatened to paralyze Cole. There, she actually went through with it, paralyzed him, and crashed the car. Finally, she escaped and woke up in her home.
Are you annoyed that I haven’t written Michelle Yeoh’s character’s name yet? Well, I was even more annoyed that I didn’t find out her name until this moment. Her character, Eliza, finally decided to date the man from her book club. She seemed to be lighter and have more personality, and life seemed normal– at least for now.
Later on, the Russian mobsters came back for revenge. That’s when we finally noticed all the small details embedded in the film.
She had surgical tools hidden all over her home, which she used in her defence when need be.
At some point in the story, she shared that her student had very poor suturing skills, and the stitches came undone with one movement. Well, that’s how she killed the evil man who needed the surgery. But then again, she tried to give him CPR to save him, because he was her patient after all.
But that’s not exactly how the film ends; you’ll have to see it to find out.
TIFF-goers can check out The Surgeon for a final time at Scotiabank Theatre on Sept. 18 at 9:10 p.m., before the film hits the theatres on an unconfirmed date.
