Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11758 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-03-26
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Special Edition, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Polish, Icelandic, Finnish, Czech
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 139 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Independence Day, a scientist played by Jeff Goldblum once actually had a fistfight with a man (Bill Pullman) who is now president of the United States. That same president, late in the film, personally flies a jet fighter to deliver a payload of missiles against an attack by extraterrestrials. Independence Day is the kind of movie so giddy with its own outrageousness that one doesn't even blink at such howlers in the plot. Directed by Roland Emmerich, Independence Day is a pastiche of conventions from flying-saucer movies from the 1940s and 1950s, replete with icky monsters and bizarre coincidences that create convenient shortcuts in the story. (Such as the way the girlfriend of one of the film's heroes--played by Will Smith--just happens to run across the president's injured wife, who are then both rescued by Smith's character who somehow runs across them in alien-ravaged Los Angeles County.) The movie is just sheer fun, aided by a cast that knows how to balance the retro requirements of the genre with a more contemporary feel. --Tom Keogh

Video Description
Special Features (To be confirmed):

Disc 1:
Digitally THX Mastered Multi-Story Option: theatrical/special edition versions
Two Audio Commentaries
Disc 2 :
Original Theatrical Ending - 'bi -plane'
Theatrical Trailer
3 Teaser Trailers
TV Spots
'Creating Reality' Documentary
'ID4 Invasion' TV Special
HBO First Look: 'The Making of ID4'
News Reports
Artwork, storyboards, production stills
Subtitles in English for the Hard of Hearing, Danish, Czech, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Iberian Portugese, and Swedish.

Synopsis
With a $71 million budget and mind-blowing special effects, INDEPENDENCE DAY is a grand, high-tech throwback to such films of the 1950s as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and WAR OF THE WORLDS. Here, aliens, in numerous gargantuan spaceships, arrive without warning and hover over the world's most important cities, creating global panic. The nasty visitors use death rays to blow New York, Washington D.C, and Los Angeles to smithereens. A handful of plucky Americans, including the Clinton-esque President, a gung-ho fighter pilot and a computer geek named David, attempt to devise a strategy against the invaders.
On July 4th, their risky plan is put into effect, as dozens of fighter pilots (including the President) wage an assault on the spaceships. However, their success (and the fate of the world) depends on David, who is attempting to disarm the aliens's mothership.

Customer Reviews

the aliens are coming
With a great story lined up and an A list cast all included, Independence Day broke records when released in 96, and now 12 years on it still hasn't lost any of its magic.

Will Smith (Fresh Prince of Bel Air) coming almost straight from being a rapper and starring on a network TV show got the role of a U.S pilot which put him firmly on the market as one of the hottest and youngest actors around.

Smith stars alongside Bill Pullman (While you were sleeping) and Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park) as the world comes under attack by alien spacecrafts and the stakes are raised by each of their love lives.

With its Oscar winning effects, Independence Day established itself in the Sci-Fi genre with the huge and very impressive spacecraft designs and justified it brilliantly, especially with Smith's first encounter with one of the aliens, a personal favourite moment.

And along with the great effects, comes an even better plot which is gripping, tense and extraordinary. The suspense is built as viewers are given glimpses of what is coming, and the world's response is also intriguing, none more so than the political view of the president. There was an interesting political side to the story, what to do and what not to do to save lives, keeping secrets and to use the right course of action, giving the plot more depth.

Though at first we are thrust into so many people's lives that it can be easy to forget, we gradually get to know the characters and their situations and though a bit cheesy, are still fun to watch, and at points dramatic and thankfully realistic in context.

There are some great one liners, especially from Smith. The acting is far from brilliant but the effects and the suspense in the plot is enough for it to be included in the top Sci-Fi thrillers of all time. And though it does wear thin after a few watchers, it never loses its power to entertain and shock.

the extra scenes included in this special edition are awful and don't feel right as i had seen the original release so many times

8/10

The logic of the signifier
Reviews of this film are pretty split and rightly so, it is a film that provokes many reactions. Many of the negative ones falling on the side of anti-Americanism. To those people I would ask a simple question: given a choice between the America portrayed in this film and that which we have today in 2008 which would you take?. Is this not the film that proves the logic of the Lacanian signifier, that its efficacy only appears after the fact; with S2, the signifier that grants significance to S1. S2 in this case being the attacks on September the 11th 2001, S1 being of course this film. Those images which drew crowds in 1996 were made flesh on the streets of New York and Washington, Americas unconscious lust for apocalypse breaks forth from the screen. In 1996 those ridiculous American stereotypes which admittedly this film is rank with were just that, confined to Hollywood imagination (or ignorance), we all got a laugh from the portrayal of the British as all sounding like Mr Chumley Warner and the US saving the day at the last minute with a bizarre plot of a hick from the southern states, half drunk flying a plane into a spaceship. But after that horror escaped the screen it was followed by those same stereotypes which up until 2001 remained a object of ironic derision (particularly by the European film scene) now found dictating the axioms of American foreign policy; with the inevitable quagmires of Iraq, abu ghraib and Guantanamo Bay resulting.

The film must be taken in context with today's films in the same genre. The America of Independence day is one that isn't afraid to shows itself on the end of a beating, one that has naïve optimism, the Israeli, British and Arab forces working together for the joint attack for example, and one that displays its nationalistic tendencies in an almost self deprecating ironic way. Even they are not taking it seriously. After 9/11; nationalism and the American dream were to the US psyche again made real issues to fight for and films of this sort weren't in keeping with the atmosphere of "serious" flag waving.

This film marks a important point, the last moment when the ignorance and laughable exuberance of the American dream industry could be enjoyed as a harmless indulgence. After 9/11 America lost its innocence and films like this are never likely to be seen again. Saying all this I would add that the events of the last 12 years have in fact only heightened my enjoyment of this film. It's epic and stupid, requires no thought on behalf of the viewer and if you watch it with the above in mind you will have an enjoyable no-brainer film experience. Those who take it seriously are missing the point entirely.

God bless America
Well thank god the Yanks know how to whoop some ass!!! Oh yeah!! give me five !!
A film so bad I was cheering on the Aliens until it turned out with all their technology they couldn't handle a bloody computer virus. Notice the parody of War of the Worlds here where it was the common cold virus. I can just imagine the American writing team whooping loudly at how clever and subtle that was! Probably hi fiveing each over before saluting the flag, blessing America and eating apple pie.