This review of Independence Day was published in The Kansas City Kansan newspaper on July 5, 1996.

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By Steve Crum

It is always a good sign when a movie grabs your attention so much that it seemingly ends after it has just begun. Independence Day, at two hours and 15 minutes, has that effect. It is an awesome film.

Independence Day, in fact, is the most spectacular and intriguing sci-fi action film since the Star Wars Trilogy. (The first-rate Aliens and Terminator 2 classify as sci-fi horror films.) That means the action and characterizations are stunning enough that even plausibility lapses and a talky second act hardly matter. Big bucks were spent on ID’s effects, and it shows. The result is state-of-the-art glorious. 

The story kicks off immediately as a saucer, six miles in diameter, heads toward Washington, D.C. Similar vehicles are descending upon other world capitols and major cities. Bill Pullman is cast the American President who has to deal with imminent (within six hours) invasion. Imminent evacuation is more like it. These gargantuan
ships do not even bother communicating their intentions, although Jeff Goldblum’s computer whiz David Levinson does intercept a message of their plans. 

Uncle Sam’s best war planes have no effect on the alien vessels. So a good part of the movie’s opening involves desperation and running away since virtually every monument in D.C. (including The White House) and New York City (Empire State Building, et al) are spectacularly blasted apart. 

Enter Will Smith as jock fighter pilot Captain Steven Hiller, who survives a dogfight with one of the hundreds of alien fighter saucers emerging from the hovercraft. Hiller soon leads a major attack squadron against the space guys. After punching out one of the tentacled creatures, he quips, “Now that’s what I call a close encounter.” Could he be the Fresh Prince of Altair1?

Clinton and Dole could never top this: ID’s President Whitmore dons a pilot uniform to join the fighter attack!

There are some clever inserts (a TV showing The Day the Earth Stood Still is interrupted as the invasion begins) and casting (Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner plays a fright-wigged
scientist). 

Good support via comedy relief is provided by Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid and Harvey Fierstein. 

Stargate director Roland Emmerich and his effects crew deserve major credit, making Independence Day one terrific blast. 

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: A-

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