'Test': Madhavan, Siddharth, Nayanthara's Netflix Film is Not a Great Movie—But a Fascinating Sports Drama

This article contains spoilers.

S. Sashikanth’s Test is yet another story about a celebrity feeling the rage of a common man. It follows Arjun Venkataraman (Siddharth), a legendary Indian cricketer thrown into a crisis. The crisis is manufactured by a bitter scientist, Saravanan (R. Madhavan), who needs money to fend off loan sharks, pay for his wife’s IVF treatment and, most importantly, float a revolutionary hydro-fuel project. The twists are corny and implausible. The Netflix-thriller template flattens the initial promise. There are too many loose ends, abrupt transformations, unnecessary characters, over-the-top performances (Madhavan’s villain era — or Maddy’s baddie era — is just not it), and lazy resolutions. In short, Test is not a great film.

But Test is a fascinating sports drama. Arjun is a rare cricket-movie protagonist. In the true tradition of Indian batting greats, he is refusing to retire despite a prolonged lean patch. (His Test average is still 61.2). The selectors and captain ask him to quit after the ongoing India-Pakistan series, but he feels hurt and betrayed. His ego can’t handle it. It’s clear that his poor form has cost his team as well as his family (he has no time for his son, Adi) for the last few seasons, but he is unable to let go. Arjun is determined to play the fifth and final Test, with the scoreline locked at 2-2. Once his selection is confirmed at his home ground, an increasingly unhinged Saravanan ‘tests’ him by kidnapping his son Adi and forcing Arjun into a spot-fixing racket over the 5-day match.

A still from the film.

The execution is clumsy, but the big picture is compelling. Among other things, Test scrutinises the role of sports as a medium of patriotism in a culture that’s rigged against the aspirations of everyday patriots. Most movies might have staged this as a tussle between Arjun’s personal life and his heart-on-sleeve devotion to his country. Arjun even refers to himself as a “soldier” early on. But the conflict here revolves around his long-time relationship with cricket. In an age where superstars are often accused of being selfish for acting like individuals in a team sport, Arjun’s selfishness is not decorated as a flag-waving or altruistic feeling. It is instead humanised: he’s in it for the love of the game. It’s a private attachment in an unforgivingly public space.

He rediscovers this love — the enduring simplicity of bat, ball, runs, greatness — when he finds himself making a choice between his legacy and his son. He is essentially a soldier who confesses that the instinct for survival and self-preservation in the battlefield is reframed as selfless sacrifice. The country sees an injured Indian batsman walking out against all odds to defeat Pakistan (note the choice of rivals: tailor-made for jingoistic tropes), but Arjun is really an overgrown child obsessed with cricket. The opponents are incidental. Winning or losing is just a small part of his craft; patriotism is a geo-cultural narrative adopted by sport to amplify the stakes. He's one of thousands who must feed this narrative to achieve personal gratification.

A still from the film.

Arjun is a spiritual sibling of the single-minded protagonist of Kabir Khan’s Chandu Champion (2024), a Bollywood sports drama that quietly stages patriotism as a means to an end. The Kartik Aaryan character enlists (and shines) in the Indian army not to fight for his nation and beat his chest so much as make a living and further his Olympic ambitions. It's the most pragmatic job for a small-town kid with planet-sized dreams and no resources. And he isn't dishonest about it. When he takes up para-swimming after a war injury, it's because he is still desperate to be the best at something; the sport is only a vessel, and a medal for his country is a footnote. Arjun’s ‘condition’ is similar but darker: he's struggling to break up with a sport he's dedicated his life to. His quest to reach the top involved thousands of hours of isolated focus and individual practice; he can’t understand why he isn’t entitled to more. His angst is natural because it is naked.

The perceptive thing about Test is that Saravanan, his disgruntled real-world counterpart, thinks he's “exposing” the hollowness of Arjun’s patriotism. Sara wants to prove that, as a man of science and nobility, he's the better patriot — someone who’d do anything it takes to enable the progress of the nation. He aims to reveal that everyone else is fragile in their convictions: not just the cricketer cheating to save his own family, but also a woman morally blinded by her desire to be a mother. Sara’s wife, Kumudha (Nayanthara), is a die-hard cricket fan and Arjun’s former college flame. Sara pushes her into a corner to show that she, too, is prepared to choose herself and their marriage over her nation; he temporarily convinces her to forgive his toxicity and abuse to continue funding her IVF process.

A still from the film.

Like the Joker, Sara sets out to expose the hypocrisies of a society that prefers performative devotion. He makes Arjun choose his own son's safety for the most part, reducing him to a pawn for a shady betting syndicate. He resents that loyalism in cricket is acknowledged and rewarded handsomely, when all they're doing is playing a sport with an emblem on their jerseys. Someone like Saravanan is not wrong to wonder why his patriotism is not perceived as tangible and authentic compared to Arjun’s. After all, the success of his project could fast-track India’s future, while Arjun’s success can only momentarily lift Indian spirits. Like the film itself, he has the correct idea but takes a questionable path.

A still from the film.

What he doesn’t expect is Arjun’s childlike passion for the game resurfacing in the face of adult factors like national pride and team glory; he doesn’t expect Arjun to be liberated from the religion of cricket. (He also doesn’t expect Kumudha’s humanity to resurface — where she, too, spurns the possibility of parenthood to be a better citizen). Sara doesn’t realise that sporting genius requires a level of self-involvement that can’t afford any attachment to real-world constructs. When he sees a wounded Arjun defy his threat and walk out to hit the winning runs, Saravanan assumes that Arjun’s sense of service has won, and Arjun assumes that he’s lost his son. They become two sides of one lie. Neither of the men is right, and an oblivious India is left to celebrate the fiction of their motives. It’s how Test uncloaks the tragedy of new-age patriotism: is one’s love for country even legitimate if this love isn’t a competition?