Independence Day (Single Disc Edition) (1996)

Rated:
Starring: Will Smith, Bill Pullman.
Director: Roland Emmerich

Edition Details:
• Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
• Commentary by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (scene specific)
• Commentary by special effects supervisors Volker Engel and Doug Smith
• Multi-story option: Viewer can select original theatrical release or special edition release with 9 minutes of added footage
• Widescreen anamorphic format

Editorial Reviews

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 –