02 July 1996

Whilst listening to REM's The End of the World and putting golf balls, a young scientist at SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), hears a signal from space that he is certain comes from an intelligent source. They look further only to discover that the signal appears to be coming from the moon.

The government however, have imagery that shows the object to be over five hundred miles across and about one quarter the mass of the Moon. It's definitely not an asteroid as it's slowing down.

From that point, Earth's communications systems begin getting all distorted, the source of which is discovered by technical engineer David Levinson (Jeff GoldBlum), to be a signal embedded in our satellite system.

Meanwhile, fifteen smaller objects - each miles across, have separated from the larger 'craft' and begin heading for key cities around the globe.

David discovers that the signal is reducing to zero - a countdown, but exactly what this is a countdown to, is as yet unknown and as the smaller crafts take up their positions, it becomes a race against time to get to the President (Bill Pullman) before the proverbial stuff hits the air conditioning.

Will Smith as Captain Steven Hiller, eager to kick ET's Butt

By the fourth of July - Independence Day, the truth about what the strange craft are all doing becomes all too apparent and Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) tried his best to outmanouevre one of ET's fighters, causing it to crash and that's where things really start move. Dragging an extraterretrial in his parachute, Hiller joins a rag-tag bunch all heading for Area 51, where he meets up with Levinson and between the two of them, the President of the United States and a whole heap of other mismatched individuals, they make a stand against the marauding aliens in a bid to save the human race. With supplies, equipment and the manpower to fight dwindling, it's up to those that remain to do what we all know America does best - save the world at the last possible minute... Steven Hiller had told his fiancè that the aliens would not travel twenty billion light years to pick a fight, but apparently, being friendly is not on the top of their 'to do' list. Good job too otherwise this would be a very slow and boring film.

Captain Steven Hiller on his way to 'drop ET off...'

This is one of those films that I've sat and watched more times than I care to remember and it never seems to get old. It is a great movie with thrills, spills, laughs and shocks galore.

The special effects, many of which we ground breaking when this film was made, are first-rate and thanks to Jeff Golblum, Will Smith, Judd Hirsch, Bill Pullman and a host of others, the acting is first-rate too, providing a very watchable piece, which providing you can accept the premise that aliens are invading our little blue marble, is extremely believable.

Whilst other films that have attempted this genre have tended to become quickly dated, that doesn't appear to have happened to Independence Day, as it's still as good today as it was the first day I saw it..

With a running time of 145-153 minutes (depending upon whether you have the original or extended version), this film is 'seat of the pants' viewing from the very beginning and goes well with crisps, beer and the phone off the hook for the duration.

Defintiely five stars

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