‘Reporting Live’ movie review: Lost in the shifting sands

Despite its sharp observations, sincere performances, and noble intentions, ‘Reporting Live’ eventually becomes a safe, lukewarm watch.

Published - October 09, 2026 07:31 pm IST

Parineeti Chopra in ‘Reporting Live’ | Photo Credit: Netflix

At a time when investigative journalism is making news, Reporting Live exposes the high cost of illegal sand mining. The sand mafia has deep roots in the institutional architecture, but its corruption is often exposed by stringers and is buried in the inside pages of newspapers until a journalist is mowed down or a whistleblower is burnt alive.

Drawing from real events, the film follows Sandhya Yadav (Parineeti Chopra), a field reporter for the Mumbai-based Hindi news channel Azaad Bharati, hunting for a primetime story. Alongside her pragmatic video journalist, Vinod Sharma (Deven Bhojani), she is dispatched to cover an infrastructure disaster in Visargaon, where the sudden collapse of a bridge claims the lives of school children.

While the political and administrative apparatus rushes to describe the collapse as an unavoidable accident by playing up religious beliefs of locals around a solar eclipse, Sandhya and Vinod cross paths with a resilient local whistleblower, Shiva Kaka (Amol Palekar), who points them toward a much darker, systemic rot that has quietly eroded the riverbanks and hollowed out the bridge’s foundation.

As the duo compiles concrete evidence linking the disaster directly to a massive construction empire owned by a powerful tycoon (Nasser), they face aggressive pushback. This leads to the classic newsroom conflict where their editor-in-chief, Vidur (Adil Hussain), fights to preserve editorial integrity while the compromised channel owner, Shyam (Shekhar Suman), tries to bury the story to shield the corporate network.

Director Dhruv Tripathi deserves credit for identifying the media industry’s pathologies and the corporate influence on the flow of information. From the physical risks of investigative reporting to the fragile safety of rural sources and the rising epidemic of armchair journalism, he and writer Milind Jadhav prepare a credible checklist of hazards in the modern-day newsroom.

Deven Bhojani in ‘Reporting Live’ | Photo Credit: Netflix

The film works best in its quiet, observational details, like a scene where village locals are completely absorbed in a cricket spectacle, entirely indifferent to an investigative journalist desperately waiting for eyeballs on her life-altering exposé. Her reaching out to a social media journalist for virality captures the news cycle’s emerging reality. Furthermore, the film serves as a crucial civic reminder that the Right to Information (RTI) Act retains its bite.

However, after identifying the issues, the film struggles to inhabit them. The treatment feels detached, reading more like an outsider’s textbook critique of the fourth column’s fault lines. Moreover, after laying out the plot’s contours, Tripathi dilutes the institutional rot. The story focuses largely on corporate syndicates and local builders but stops short of dissecting the political nexus that lets these networks thrive in the first place. The makers critique media bosses for burying risky stories, yet the film takes few creative risks itself. They gradually sanitise a grassroots crisis into a glossy, convenient newsroom conversation.

While both Parineeti and Deven deliver sincere performances, their age and experience don’t match what the script expects. The script writes Sandhya more as an entry-level journalist desperately hunting for her breakout story. Casting an established, mature actor in the role takes away the character’s hungry beginner vulnerability and curiosity.

Beyond the casting, the screenplay stumbles by falling back on well-worn genre tropes. The central investigation lacks friction. The fearless reporter versus the ruthless syndicate follows a predictable path with little narrative surprise. The cast also features heavyweights like Palekar, Suman, and Hussain, but their characters are thinly fleshed out and reduced to standard plot devices. The veterans try to navigate the narrative haze, but only Hussain cuts through the smoke.

Reporting Live is currently streaming on Netflix.

Published - October 09, 2026 07:31 pm IST

Indian cinema / Hindi cinema / entertainment (general) / arts, culture and entertainment / cinema / The Hindu MetroPlus

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