Exam (2009): If you love one room drama or thrillers - probably you will end up liking this. The last I saw something similar was "Carnage" and it had us in splits - never had that much fun watching a one room drama with four adults fighting over kiddie issues. But this one with bloody almost ten adults that too from various walks of life, regions and even nationalities fail to impress me. At best I will call it a movie once seen and forgotten types. It starts pretty well and picks up the pace too but loses steam somewhere in between and the way it ends - you just want to move on to the next movie and forget about this one. Now, imagine the world is ending and this was the last job that you could apply to save yourself from being sucked into the end of the world. How badly would you try for that job?? That's how it opens up when you see people getting ready for an exam of a life time. They already have cuts and bruises. Some even have blood marks on their bodies probably from some earlier rounds which we aren't shown or explained. Eight adults - four men and four women from different regions and nationalities have got selected for this exam. They have 90 minutes to solve the question and each individual is give a white paper sheet with a pencil.
They are locked in a room with a security guard - he even has a gun hanging on one side. If this isn't enough the rules are way too good. They can't talk to the invigilator or to the security guard - if they do, they will be disqualified. If they destroy their answer sheets even mistakenly they will be disqualified. Even if they write something wrong they will be disqualified. They cannot go out of the room. There is no question even on the paper. Their exam is to find the question and then reply. Only one question is there and there will be only one answer :).
Time starts and they start thinking. Suddenly they realize that they can't talk to the examiner and guard but they can talk in between themselves to solve the query. This sets the tone for us to know the characters better. One of them is a shrewd white, a good looking blond, an Indian gambler, a brunette, a French guy, a black probably American, one cute psychiatrist and another lady who exits too early to know her character :). Each one of them has his own theory. The first lady starts writing something and gets evicted. French guy blabbers something and that shrewd brit tears his sheet and tells him to eat it hence he gets evicted too. They try to turn off the lights, turn on various lights, try to wash the paper to see the imprints. Again the over smart dude burns one of the females paper and she too gets evicted.
When nothing works they start doubting each other that one of them may be an employee of the company and already knows the trick. The indian even starts interrogating them as well and That's when they come to know that one of them is indeed a part of the company. Its a pharma company and that there is a virus spread in the planet due to which everybody is going to die provided the infected people take a pill every hour. They have a guy in between them who is an infect and he does takes the pill every hour. The black guys wife died with the same virus.
The turn of things, their guess work and differences go so bad that at one point of time you feel they are all going to kill each other and the survivor will get the job but no - it isn't that easy. For the most part it works well but when it comes to ending - it isn't that convincing. May be the director should have thought something more creative or shall I say shocking. At least I wasn't too happy with it. Hence I just liked it and not loved it.
At best it can be an average one time watch. You will definitely have a tough time recommending it to anyone. You never know - you may love it ;).
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