Heavily Flawed But Immensely Enjoyable As Well!

Rating: Null/10 (4 July 2014)

From the director who once stated that he is "a filmmaker, not a scientist" as his defense to the plethora of historical & scientific inaccuracies present in his movies, Independence Day remains Roland Emmerich's most enjoyable & unabashedly entertaining work to date and is the picture that introduced me to this weirdo. And although it offers the same ridiculousness as his other features, it still succeeds as a solid popcorn flick that was once at the forefront of large-scale disaster films.
The story concerns an alien invasion against which the entire mankind unite to fight for its freedom. It begins on July 2 when the alien mothership enters the Earth's orbit & deploys several spaceships which take over the major cities of the world & annihilate them completely. On July 3, a counterattack is launched but turns out to be ineffective until a computer expert finds out a flaw in alien's advanced system. And so, July 4 becomes the day when humanity puts up its final fights for its freedom.
Direction by Roland Emmerich here is actually top-notch when compared to his other works, writing employs all the flimsy narrative, clichéd dialogues & illogical plot developments, production design is stunning for its magnitude, visual effects were jaw-dropping at its time of release but now looks pretty dated, the camera-work is nicely carried out, editing isn't bad as the story is finely paced & the score by David Arnold has a very patriotic feel to it & keeps the drama flowing with excitement.
Coming to the performances, its ensemble cast chips in with adequate contribution in the film & although there was no standout performance by anyone, Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum & Bill Pullman still manage to make their characters work despite the lack of depth & characterization in the script itself. The entire alien advanced technology is beautifully portrayed as well plus I really admire the cool design of the spaceships, the meticulous detail in which it's all presented & the look of the aliens as well.
On an overall scale, Roland Emmerich has made some of the worst films in his career but Independence Day isn't one of them. Sure it's flawed & relies on visual effects plus patriotic themes to hide most of it but then, it's also hard to not be amazed by its ambition & how it influenced the disaster genre. If you're looking for a fun, relaxing & exciting movie extravaganza to just chill out, then Independence Day is pretty much capable of delivering that experience.