Michelle Yeoh takes her first solo lead role since winning the Best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, starring in the gruesome action-thriller The Surgeon, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Written and directed by Roshan Sethi, the film casts Yeoh as Eliza, a veteran surgeon on the brink of retirement who is abducted at gunpoint by criminals and forced to operate on their dying leader, only to turn her medical expertise into a brutal means of self-defence against her captors.

The 92-minute film pairs graphic, anatomically explicit violence with Yeoh's established martial arts prowess, as her character uses surgical precision to incapacitate and kill the gang members holding her hostage. Martin Freeman plays the ailing crime boss Sean, while Yuri Kolokolnikov appears as a menacing henchman; the review praises Yeoh's authenticity and physicality but notes the supporting villains are thinly drawn. Critics highlight the prosthetics work and fight choreography as standout elements of what is described as an inventive, if stomach-churning, entry in the action genre.