Test

Test Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: R Madhavan, Nayanthara, Siddharth & Others

Director: S Sashikanth

What’s Good: R Madhavan – he is the good, the better and the best!

What’s Bad: The shoddily written first half

Loo Break: Take it in the first half!

Watch or Not?: Yes.

Language: Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, English with subtitles.

Available On: Netflix

Runtime: 2 hours 25 minutes

User Rating:

Have you ever appeared in an examination for which you were never prepared? Or let me rephrase that – Have you ever prepared a whole night for your exam, and the next day, when you get the question paper, you realize it is not the subject you were preparing for? From there, you have two choices: either you write nothing and fail, or you write something and struggle to get passing marks!

R Madhavan appears in exactly such an examination, only difference being, he not just passes this examination, but he tops the entire class! Yes, the topper of the year! Let me start from the beginning so that you get a better context about the premise.

The movie, helmed by S Sashikanth, introduces the three main characters in the first ten minutes. Siddharth, who plays a cricketer Arjun Venkataraman, a celebrated man on the Indian cricket team, is struggling from non-performing lows. There is R Madhavan (Saravanan), a scientist who came to India after securing a degree from MIT (not Manipal from MIT from Boston), and there is Nayanthara, a school teacher Kumudha, who is Saravanan’s wife.

All of them have their personal struggles, and with every struggle, they have a choice – the dilemma to be the Hero or the villain! Interestingly, by the end of it, they all turn into a version of half Hero and half villain, beautifully summarizing the dilemmas of life and the impact of one’s decisions – they may be heroic for one but villainous for the other!

Test Movie Review: Script Analysis

Test beautifully struggles with the basic dilemma of good vs bad but never balances them or predicts the easier route for the film. Honestly, at times, it gets too confusing for my petite brain, and everything is so clueless in the first half that I feel exactly like that student who prepared for something else, and the question paper is for a totally different subject.

But the story takes an unbelievable jump in the second half as R Madhavan decides to turn the villain, giving up on struggles and taking the reigns of his life in his hands! Test begins with a very interesting choice – A hero will destroy you to save the world, and A villain will destroy the world to save you. Who are you, and how far will you go?

In the beginning the story makes itself very clear that it is about the basic dilemma of life – to be the good one or the bad one! But who decides the logic behing this good and bad is what the entire film transpires and translates into! The writing team, stumbles a lot during the first half but it is all very clear, once they decide to choose the captain of this match and it is none other than R Madhavan!

Before Madhavan, Nayanthara was struggling to choose her life and family expectations over her husband and his dreams. Similarly, there is R Madhavan, who struggles to be a family man or a man who rules the world and is a winner! Finally, Siddharth is in the dilemma of being a cricketer or a family man! Basically, each one of them has the same dilemma – to choose for themselves and their dreams or choose their family! That is why there are no clear lines between good and bad, right or wrong, and with every step these protagonists start to take, it seems like their understanding of being on the right side.

Test Movie Review: Star Performance

While there are three protagonists, R Madhavan clearly overshadows Nayanthara and Siddharth. They seem like extended support to this story that is ruled by Madhavan and his stellar performance as the Hero of his world and Villain of everyone else’s world! He has already bowled us as the Shaitaan, the title role in Ajay Devgn’s film, and interestingly, he plays a brilliant psychologically drained man here as well! While he starts as a brood who is just pissed off with the privileged class, he turns into a maniac by the end of it because it refuses to accept to take life as it is. Mad people are the only people he once announces, and by the end of it, he makes sure he proves it each and every second of his life!

Madhavan, in fact, is the man who elevates the story and a very flawed script to another level! If not for him, this film would have been destroyed in its first half with nowhere to go.

Nayanthara and Siddharth have equally flawed character arcs. They all get a chance to become a hero, but both of them surrender to the half-baked script and the sub-par writing!