'Test' Movie Review: Complex Characters Get Benched In This Middling Drama

Director: S Sashikanth 
Writers: S Sashikanth, Suman Kumar
Cast: Madhavan, Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, Kaali Venkat
Streaming on: Netflix

One could be half an hour into the setup of Sashikanth’s Test and still be unsure of the genre of the film. When seen from the point of view of 34-year-old Kumudha (Nayanthara), Test is arguably about the testing phase leading up to her last attempt at being a mother. As for Indian team cricketer Arjun (Siddharth), who struggles with his form in what could be his final test match, the movie could be a sports drama about regaining respect from oneself. Finally, when you lean closer into Sara (Madhavan), the out-of-luck MIT scientist just one step away from changing the world, you could even look at Test as a sci-fi film about hydro-fuels.

Not that this mix of genres in Test isn't necessarily a bad thing. The film spends so much time planting us within the conflicts of each of these characters that you feel like you’re being set up for the ebbs and flows of a juicy mini-series, wherein each character is as important as the last. It’s a film that could have gone anywhere with its complexities; however, instead of going deeper into any of them, Test chooses to settle on one central plot line as it approaches the halfway mark.

This plot revolves around the five days of the final test (symbolic or otherwise) in each of their lives, connected by a criminal mastermind that aims to win big through spot-betting. But when the plot finally clicks into place and you see the thin line connecting the three main characters, you feel the convenience in the writing and in the series of coincidences that had to happen to lead us here.

A still from 'Test'

What makes Test somewhat engaging isn’t its plot or the narrative tension that arises from its surface. Instead of waiting to see what happens when the plot throws in an element of danger, we’re invested in seeing how Sara, Arjun and Kumudha will react to those situations given how far the film has already pushed them to their limits. And most fascinatingly, when the film pits Arjun with Sara, there’s an eerie similarity that gives you the notion that you’re looking at the same person, just that they’re on two different sides of morality.

The director in Sashikanth makes cheeky choices — even with the costumes — to let us buy in deeper into the idea that Sara and Arjun are the same. So, if we see Arjun in the whites of a cricket player, you find Sara also sporting a white shirt the moment he decides to cross over to the dark side. Both the men are equally talented, and perhaps both born with the same natural ability in their respective fields. In a sense, their passion towards these fields is so intense that they’d both do just about anything to get ahead.

Their Machiavellian spirit make them impossible to live with and even harder to live without. Borrowing from The Fountainhead, this isn’t a film in which the Howard Roarks are being pitched against the Peter Keatings of the world. In the world of Test, Roark and Keating are both two sides of one coin, separated but for one factor…success.

A still from 'Test'

Yet, these are all layers that come together better in the mind than in text. Even when the film transforms from a mix of genres into a streamlined drama written around a crime, you long for Test to be more convincing and appear lived-in. You miss this the most when there's a sudden jerk in the way Sara transforms from a misunderstood genius into an evil manipulator, who is suddenly allowed to guffaw like a Bond villain. Or in the implausibly convenient way an important character simply walks into the film, like it was his duty to move the plot forward.

You also feel this staginess in the way Sara and Kumudha’s house looks and feels like a movie set, or the perfectly-curated ikat saree ensemble the latter wears even in the most distressing of times. All this contributes to keeping us at arm’s length from the film’s drama, even when the premise is ripe with possibilities. But then again, when the writing leaves you with more questions than answers, you struggle to remain invested, wondering where it went wrong.

Take the detail of how Sara hides the fact that he’s sold his business from Kumudha. It’s the sort of secrecy that could end marriages, but when it comes to the obvious nature of Sara’s defunct business (a canteen!), you wonder how someone as intelligent as Kumudha could have gone on for so long without noticing. We may have been kinder in allowing such creative liberties in a better film, but with Test, this becomes one more thing that makes it feel more like a first draft.

What we’re left with it, as we near the last day of the Test match, is a set of fascinating characters that deserved better writing, and a film in which they are allowed to move the plot — instead of remaining slaves to the plot itself.