Exam

Eight job applicants (Black, White, Brown, Asian, Brunette, Blonde, Dark and Deaf (the movie chose those nicknames, not I)) have reached the final stage of a very top secret selection process for a high end position at somewhere. A man gives them cryptic instructions and eighty minutes, then leaves the room and lets them have at it.
I am an absolute sucker for "limited number of people stuck in a small space to solve a mystery / have their personalities ricochet off each other" type movies. It's a genre that's hard to stumble across (the only other ones I can think of right now are Saw, Cube and another one I watched a year or two ago but have forgotten the name of ... Breathing Room, maybe?) and it isn't always done well, but even when it's lousy, I still love it.
Luckily, Exam is done well, though the first half, which focuses more on the "solving a mystery," was far more interesting to me than the second, "ricocheting personalities" half.
Most of the problem was White. Fuck that asshole, I hope he dies in a fire. The movie tries to give him a faint hint of sympathy but by the time they introduce that little tidbit about him, you're already out for his goddamn blood, so it doesn't really work.
Sadly, even the likeable characters (of which there are few) have moments of absolute unlikeableness that kind of ruin them. I liked Black through most of the movie and at one point he full on socks White in the face, which makes you want to stand up and cheer, but then he does something (I don't remember what now) that kind of spoils him for me.
But not as much as Brown, who was kind of intriguing if a bit assholey, completely crosses the line and never wins back my favor. Which is fine because I'm not entirely sure why I was kind of rooting for him in the first place.
The other problem I had with the movie (and this is something that will only bother me) is in the beginning I felt like it could have been a companion piece to The Prisoner: this is how you get a job in The Village. But then they started explaining about the place where they were applying and made it very clear what kind of a company it was, and that dopey little fangirl fantasy of mine had to be put to rest.
Anyway, Exam was really entertaining but occasionally frustrating. I'm glad I finally saw it.

End of line.
-Sally