Exam Review: It’s just a feeling of tension that watching a woman sit inside a police station can give you while you don’t want one question to defeat your smidgen of a disguise, and that drive makes Exam a terrific watch when it’s slowly running out of gas later on. This Amazon Prime video thriller, helmed by A. Sarkunam and featuring a crisply managed performance by Dushara Vijayan, starts with the promise of being a much bracier and wiser crime genre web series than the majority of the shows that are released in this genre this year.
The idea is enough to initially hook you – a fake cop who infiltrates a system already plagued by examination fraud and corruption. I was so locked-in for three episodes. The risk was instant, the twists were on the money and all the “close calls” that were encountered within that station were real. Unfortunately, the series gradually settles into a more predictable format, based on investigation, rather than the original series’s unpredictable one, and renders what might have been an outstanding political thriller into a fairly entertaining but somewhat flawed production.
The best thing about the series is the concept it is based on. The story is about corruption and scams within the Civil Service Examinations, with a few victims attempting to find out the truth behind fake ranks and organised malpractice. Dushara Vijayan, as Jhansi, teams up to infiltrate the network from the inside. To make the investigation easier, she disguises herself as a police officer and infiltrates into the department. I really liked the idea since examination scams is a topic that is not only emotionally charged but is also of social interest and so arouses public discontent. The series was packed full of the components of a political crime thriller.
The surprise was what was most effective for me in the first three episodes. This writing had Jhansi in danger and I would always think that if someone in the station realized that she was not the true officer, she might be arrested. On the surface, it seems like an impossible situation: A stranger walks into a police department and takes over without being discovered by any other cops. But the show deftly exploits this loose thread to build suspense. Those moments were well set up and really made me care. There were plenty of little bends and I never knew what was going to happen next.
Dushara Vijayan moves on through those early episodes with a lot of confidence. She is nervous, urgent and has enough emotional control to make the impersonation believable. Though she was under tight restrictions on space during most part of the series, Aditi Balan always leaves a lasting impression whenever the shooting is done on her. Another veteran actor Abbas brings some weight to the proceedings with his composed screen presence. The first few episodes are also quite film-like in their visuals. Indeed, I often wondered – this could have been a super tight feature film rather than a loosely written web series.
Unfortunately, the momentum fades as the series get deeper into the investigation. The actual scam, how it worked, how the team blew it open and how they attempted to evade the consequences should have been the core of the series. But those final four episodes are less interesting and predictable. It was very easy for me to predict what things I knew were going to go happen in a general sense before they did, which helped alleviate a lot of the tension. The script’s punch lines no longer pounce on you as they did in the beginning. For all this, the creators keep one mystery alive pretty well: I really didn’t know who the main villain was until it was revealed.
I also felt the pacing was uneven in the second half. The show always makes an explosive claim but the emotional and dramatic pay-off are rarely as satisfying as they promise. The first half plays confidently and fairly quickly, with the latter series gradually becoming more familiar thriller fare. That is something that makes the series not really memorable.
But I wouldn’t say Exam is a letdown. The social relevance of the subject matter, combined with good opening episodes and the ever-present danger of being deceived by Jhansi keeps it reasonably engaging. I’m sure that those who like a political thriller with investigative musings will find enough here to keep them hooked, even if the plot doesn’t make full use of its terrific premise.
It’s a better than average if not decent, though somewhat inconsistent, thriller, overall, from start to finish.
Rating: 3/5
