MOVIE REVIEWS

Review by CinemaSerf

Some time after aliens have landed on Earth and pretty much decimated North America, they turn their attentions on Sydney and bent on the destruction of that city - and it's population - arrive in great numbers with overwhelming technological and military superiority. Luckily, though, there are a band of plucky resistance fighters whom, along with a few of the aliens sympathetic to their cause, are working together to find a way to thwart this seemingly unstoppable invasion. Well to be fair - the visual effects are not half bad: plenty of lasers and space ships, pyrotechnics and gun battles - it does not hang around. The acting and the dialogue, though, well that's where it parts company from the obvious similarity with "Independence Day" (1996) because here, that is all really pretty dreadful. Hunky Dan Ewing's "Matt" leads the charge but there is plenty of internal power-struggling with "Bartlett" (Temuera Morrison) and "Hayes" (Daniel Gillies) to clutter up the already pretty convoluted characterisations. It's ridiculously long, too - almost like two or three episodes of a weak mini-series rolled into one. Perhaps it did wonders for the sale of rubber "Sea Devil" masks, but otherwise this is all pretty predictable and disappointing right from the start