It is an unspecified time in the near future, and eight business candidates are to take a final test towards the greatest job they could imagine. There's only one piece of paper, one answer to make, and eighty minutes.
I will be the first to admit that I have a respect and admiration for films that narrow their scope to a handful of people and one or two locations (Phone Booth, Disappearance of Alice Creed) and Exam is no exception. The exam room is stark and modern, and the eight candidates are dog-eat-dog business people (it is like watching an extreme version of television's The Apprentice) and very, very little is explained of the outside world.
This is were Exam begins to show cracks in its pristine quality; a lack of believability. The film escalates as the candidates struggle to understand what "the question" is. But when they start to threaten each other bodily, more information about the world they live in is required to make such an action viable (for themselves and the company they are seeking to join).
The ending itself is painfully obvious; I knew exactly what "the question" would be, and what the candidates shouldn't do to achieve it, and I imagine most people would suss this out, making the extremes these professional characters go to (in under eighty minutes no less) quite unbelievable.
An interesting concept with undercurrents of social commentary about businesses and the people they employ, which should be explored, but falls down with its own ambiguities.
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