Miracle Mile: Fate, Love & the Apocalypse

Many apocalyptic thrillers and disaster films tell their story on an epic-sized canvas. Movies like Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, Independence Dayand Deep Impact feature a sprawling cast of characters fighting for their lives to survive ships or airplanes in peril, natural disasters, rampaging monsters or alien invaders. Miracle Mile (1988), writer-director Steve De Jarnatt's end of the world tale, travels a different road. The film relates its story on a much smaller scale, and it's a unique, offbeat entry in the pantheon of end of the world thrillers.

Anthony Edwards in Miracle Mile

As the movie opens, we meet a Los Angeles based musician named Harry. While visiting the La Brea Tar Pits museum, he meets Julie, who works at a local diner. The two hit it off and spend the afternoon together. They agree to meet later that evening for a date after Julie's shift as a waitress is over. A power failure in Harry's building causes him to oversleep, and miss their rendezvous. When he gets to the diner hours later, Julie has left the premises, believing that he's jilted her. Harry uses the payphone (hey, this is the 1980s, remember?) outside the coffee shop to call her, and leaves her a message. He apologizes for missing their date and asks her to meet him later.

That's when fate intervenes. The phone rings, and Harry picks it up. A frenzied voice on the other end of the line starts talking about an impending nuclear attack, and says that we're going to retaliate. It turns out that Chip, the caller, works at a military base. He dialed the wrong number, and thought he had reached his Dad. Before Harry can confirm Chip's story, there are gunshots on the line, and a voice tells him "Forget what you just heard," before breaking the connection. Harry goes back into the diner, and tells everyone there what just happened. The reactions of the customers there vary from some of them thinking he's crazy to others taking him deadly seriously. If what Harry heard is true, they've got just over an hour to get out of the area before the attack happens.

The group in the diner plans an escape, thanks to a customer named Landa, who's a stock trader and has some connections, thanks to her having dated a guy from the Rand Corporation. As the time for the attack inches closer, Harry works his way across the city to find Julie before the coming apocalypse. Can he save her in time? Is there really a nuclear attack imminent, or was the phone call a hoax? Is Harry dreaming the whole thing? One thing's for sure: Harry knows that Julie is the love of his life, and he's got to find her before the doomsday clock runs out.

The cast is fantastic. Anthony Edwards is marvelous as Harry, and Mare Winningham is terrific as Julie. The two knew each other before working on the film, and they have excellent chemistry.  The rest of the stellar cast is filled with familiar faces, including Denise Crosby, Diane Delano, Mykelti Williamson, Kurt Fuller, and Danny De La Paz. They're all wonderful in the movie. The scenes in the diner feel a bit like a classic TV drama from the 1950s. They have the aura of a Playhouse 90 or Twilight Zone episode. According to Denise Crosby, who I met a few years ago at a convention, the cast was actually able to re-hearse these scenes before production, and it gives the early portion of the film a natural, low-key, one-act play kind of vibe. 

Miracle Mile is a unique combination of genres; it starts out as a 1980s “meet cute’ love story, then morphs into a doomsday thriller, an action movie, and finally, offers us a very 1970s style downbeat climax. The story's tonal shifts puzzled some of those who initially attempted to produce the film. Steven De Jarnatt's script had been circulating in Hollywood for years, and it was known as one of the best unproduced screenplays in the pipeline. According to De Jarnatt, at one point the film was being developed at Warner Brothers as the basis for Twilight Zone: The Movie, but it never came to pass, because the writer-director balked at changing the film’s ending. De Jarnatt eventually bought back the script and attempted to get the project off the ground himself, when producer John Daly and Hemdale Films stepped in, and worked with him to produce the movie.

De Jarnatt does a solid job with the film’s direction. The effects are a bit dated, because this is the pre-CGI age, but cinematographer Theo van de Sande does a great job evoking the night-time world of Los Angeles, aided by the effective, deeply moody score provided by Tangerine Dream. Miracle Mile offers a fascinating “what if” scenario. What if you knew you only had a very short time to live? What would you do with the moments you had left? If you enjoy doomsday thrillers, Miracle Mile is a little something different for the genre. It’s a very personal disaster film. You might find yourself thinking about just how much of what happens to Harry and Julie is fate, and if in fact, it really happened at all. The movie is available in a marvelous Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber with a number of great extras, including a commentary with writer-director De Jarnatt, and a cast reunion featurette. Here’s a link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNXZX8JRb6o.

This post is part of the Disaster Blogathon, hosted by my fellow bloggers over at Dubsism and The Midnite Drive-In. I’d like to thank them for allowing me to join in on the fun! Follow this link for more info, and to check out the other entries in the blogathon: https://dubsism.com/2020/06/10/the-disaster-blog-a-thon-is-here/.