In Exam, A. Sarkunam takes India's government job craze and packages it into a crime thriller. The series follows Jhansi (Dushara Vijayan), a young woman who kidnaps a DSP named Maramalli (Aditi Balan) and assumes her identity to investigate the Regional Public Service Exam (RPSE) scam. It's an exciting setup—an imposter moving among actual police officers—and it begins with a tense fight scene set inside the DSP's vehicle. If nothing else, Sarkunam at least gets the slickness of such sequences right. There is genuine kinetic pleasure in the way the camera stays close to Jhansi and Maramalli inside the car as they engage in a physical altercation, punching and kicking each other. The series also works with an interesting idea: an "outsider" exposing the rot festering inside the system with a dedication that surpasses that of the actual officers. It takes a con to expose a con carried out with the help of people wearing government uniforms. Make that con about leaked papers and a compromised examination system, and the story begins to feel uncomfortably close to reality, thanks, among many things, to all the noise around the recent NEET papers.
But Exam not only targets those occupying seats of power; it also shines a light on parents so obsessed with government jobs that they force their children to pursue them and even spend money to help them pass the exams. Not all of these students are suited for the profession; many simply mug up textbooks without comprehending what's written on the page. They also display little curiosity about the wider world. Ask them, for instance, the capital of Myanmar, and they freeze like statues sculpted from stone. The scammers exploit such parents and such students to run a shady, profitable business. So who's the real villain?
One of the ideas Sarkunam strongly emphasizes—and that becomes Exam's core—is that students who genuinely study hard and burn the midnight oil deserve admission into these government positions. It's a good thought, though one the series never fully develops. Sarkunam treats academic excellence as intrinsically noble. Left unexplored is the possibility that many students who work hard, clear the exams, and secure government jobs can still turn out to be just as corrupt—and just as undeserving—as the candidates who paid middlemen. One is dishonest from the very beginning. The other merely performs honesty before revealing his true nature later. Sarkunam, of course, never dives into these murkier grey areas. Instead, he mixes simplistic black-and-white morality with a chess-like game in which Jhansi must constantly avoid being checkmated.
There are genuine thrills in the early episodes, especially when Jhansi has to prevent herself from being exposed by a journalist and later by Maramalli's mother (Sharmila) and daughter (Aana Chris). There is also a Kafkaesque mini-segment in which a mother trying to meet her imprisoned daughter is forced to endure an endless bureaucratic process so burdened with rules that she dies before completing it. But beyond two or three highlights, Exam becomes thuddingly dull. It stumbles hardest during scenes meant to function as emotional hooks or major turning points. The first involves the death of a woman after a fish lodges itself in her throat and chokes her. What is supposed to be tragic instead comes across as unintentionally comical—I was reminded of the absurd car accident in Love Insurance Kompany that leads to a daughter's death. How can one expect greatness from directors who do not even know how to make fatalities feel fatal? The second scene involves Jhansi conveniently overhearing a phone conversation in which Maramalli practically implicates herself. The ease with which the moment unfolds reeks of plot convenience. The contrivance is so blatant that it exposes the limits of Sarkunam's imagination.
No wonder Jhansi's teammates are reduced to cardboard cutouts with no personality or presence. We do not miss them when they disappear from the screen. We feel nothing when they leave the mortal realm. Everybody exists merely to perform a function within the script; they just push the plot forward. Sarkunam reveals only the bare minimum information necessary to keep the story moving. The characters resemble marionettes, rigidly following the director's command. Similarly, Sarkunam creates snappy, tight, emotionally indifferent images that exist solely to channel exposition. He might as well have pointed the camera directly at the screenplay to flaunt his good intentions. If Exam is a cinematic test, then Sarkunam resembles a student who copies answers straight from the key without bothering to understand the method, the process, or the reasoning behind them. He directs mechanically, relying heavily on clichés and dramatic shortcuts that reveal little affection for filmmaking itself. Sarkunam, alas, fails to prove himself capable of the task. In the end, he himself begins to resemble a con.
Final Score - [3/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times