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Rating: 1/5
An investigative thriller has one job: make you lean forward. You should want to know what the reporter finds, fear for her when she gets too close, and feel the walls closing in. Reporting Live fails at all of it. It is a film without tension, grip, thrill, excitement or entertainment, and it never makes a case for why it exists.
A promising premise, wasted
On paper, the setup is solid. Directed by Dhruv Tripathi, who co-wrote it with Mihir Jadhav, the film is billed as an investigative thriller about a lone reporter taking on the sand-mining mafia. Illegal sand mining is a real and deadly racket in India, and a story about a journalist exposing it should crackle with danger.
On screen, it barely flickers. The film follows a young reporter and her seasoned cameraman as a promising lead pulls them into the illegal sand-mining trade, but the danger they supposedly face never feels real. The mafia is more talked about than felt. Threats arrive on cue and fade without consequence. Scenes that should build dread instead drift from one conversation to the next. By the halfway mark, the “thriller” label feels like false advertising.
The pacing is sluggish, the reveals are predictable, and the climax lands with a shrug. A film about chasing a story somehow has no urgency at all.
Parineeti Chopra: an absolute miscast
The biggest problem sits right at the centre. Parineeti Chopra plays an ambitious young field reporter, and she is an absolute miscast. Her performance is below average, and she never once convinces you that this woman does this job for a living.
She doesn’t speak like a reporter. Real field journalists have a rhythm: quick, probing questions, a practised piece-to-camera delivery, a habit of pressing for one more answer. Chopra’s line readings are soft, rehearsed and conversational, closer to a film heroine than a journalist chasing a scoop.
She doesn’t carry herself like one either. Her body language lacks the restless alertness, the street-smart confidence and the instinct to read a room that define a reporter in the field. When she confronts dangerous people, she seems to be acting out bravery rather than inhabiting it. Coming soon after her Netflix series Shaque: Trust No One, this is another misstep, and it suggests she needs far better-fitting roles.
Veterans with nothing to do
The supporting cast includes Deven Bhojani, Amol Palekar, Adil Hussain and Shekhar Suman, a line-up of seasoned performers who could have lifted the film. Instead, the script gives them little to work with. They bring brief moments of credibility, but they cannot rescue a story that has no pulse.
The verdict
Reporting Live has an important subject, a respectable cast and a premise ripe for tension. What it delivers is a flat, forgettable film anchored by a lead who never looks the part. This is a below-average film that reports a lot but says very little.
Skip it. There are far better investigative thrillers on Netflix worth your evening.
