Michelle Yeoh's 'John Wick meets The Pitt' thriller is at 100% — and Martin Freeman plays the crime boss holding her at gunpoint
Yeoh plays a retired surgeon dragged back to the table at gunpoint. Sony outbid the field for it after early screenings.
Right, if you thought the idea of mixing guns with scalpels sounded daft, think again, because Michelle Yeoh is about to deliver exactly that in her latest, all-original action outing, The Surgeon. Let me just be clear: this is not some lazy John Wick knock-off – though, granted, it wears its action credentials very openly on its sleeve – but instead, it throws Yeoh into the middle of a mad blend of hard-hitting brawls and hospital drama, a bit like some fever dream where Keanu Reeves stumbles into The Pitt (the hit HBO medical series) and things get very bloody, very quickly.
In The Surgeon, Yeoh plays a world-class doctor who’s packed in her hospital whites for a well-earned retirement. That is, until she’s yanked back into the fray at gunpoint by a gang led by Martin Freeman – yes, genuinely, Martin Freeman is a crime boss now, shouldn’t work but apparently does. The gang’s got a sick member and absolutely no patience for A&E waiting times, so Yeoh’s character is forced back to the operating table, except this time her scalpel is just as likely to be aimed at limbs as at the enemy. It’s not all doom and gloom though: apparently, it’s set to a “fast-paced, pulse-pounding, Thin Lizzy-infused soundtrack.” As if the phrase “Thin Lizzy meets trauma surgery” was just waiting to happen.
The Surgeon scored a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes in early reviews.
Who’s Behind the Madness?
So, here’s where it gets a bit odd (in a good way). Roshan Sethi is directing – you might know him from his 2025 romcom A Nice Indian Boy, or as the co-creator of Fox’s medical series The Resident. He’s an actual radiation oncologist in real life, which definitely adds a nice ring of authenticity to someone hacking about in surgery while being shot at.
The film’s being produced by Thunder Road (the John Wick studio, go figure) and Tango. And in a bit of a coup, Sony Pictures has snapped up the rights for North America, as well as Latin America, Italy, China, and Hong Kong after an apparent bidding frenzy. Sony reportedly put in several offers to secure it, which tells you a lot about the film’s early buzz.
What Are People Actually Saying?
No trailer yet – so we’re working off critic reactions from early screenings. Response has been, frankly, a bit raucous. Critics have loved seeing Yeoh slashing her way through “dozens of baddies in this fast-paced action flick,” and there’s a general sense she’s “having more fun here than she’s had on screen in years, and it’s catching.” Others have dropped phrases like “a metaphorical defibrillator for those in need of a good shock”, and called it a “pulpy channel-surfing Hollywood action thriller” and a “genre-bending swirl that is part The Pitt (but gorier), part tense crime thriller, part action movie and part midnight movie.” None of which sounds remotely boring. And frankly, the fact that Martin Freeman is running a gang and Michelle Yeoh is wielding surgical tools at speed? That alone is probably worth the price of a ticket.