Customer Reviews

Miracle Mile

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

"People always think they have so much time... to do all the things they'd like to do..." Years after seeing this film, that line is one of the main things that still sticks with me.

This movie was an early effort by Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. The basic idea is of a young couple who has just started falling in love, and begun thinking of planning a life together -- only to find that World War Three has suddenly begun. Anthony Edwards is planning to meet Mare Winningham after work, which for her is about one o'clock in the morning. She works at one of those all-night coffee houses, in Los Angeles. He sets his alarm clock for midnight, and tries to catch a few hours of shut-eye before their date.

The writer, or maybe the director (I'm not sure) did something really clever here. One of the film's characters absently throws away a lit cigarette butt, which, unbeknownst to the the character, gets picked up by a bird. The bird wishes to incorporate the butt into its nest, and does so. However, because the butt still has a slight spark left in it, the butt ends up setting the nest on fire. The small nest fire does not spread, but it does have the effect of burning through the insulation of the electrical wires upon which the nest sits. As luck would have it, these wires are the ones which supply Anthony Edwards' building with electricity. So when the power fails, so does his alarm clock, although he remains ignorant of the entire sequence of cause and effect behind this event... this little sequence makes us think of the many chains of events going on all the time, outside our own circle of awareness, which could eventually have some impact upon us. In the case of the bird with the cigarette butt, the result is that Anthony Edwards is three hours late to meet Mare Winningham, who of course has already gone home in a state of depression. However, the fact that he is late for their date has another chance result -- he happens to be standing near a payphone, right outside Mare Winningham's coffeehouse, when it rings. The caller is part of another, far more deadly unseen sequence of cause and effect, going on out in the world beyond L.A. We never find out the details of what has been going on in the place where the caller is calling from, (a missile silo), or the events in Washington and Moscow that led up to the random phone call. Unfortunately, the sequence in which the caller is playing a part seems to have come to a horrifying conclusion -- the caller claims that a nuclear war has been declared, completely unknown to U.S. citizens, in the middle of the night.

Anthony Edwards isn't even sure if the phone call is real. Obviously it was a wrong number. Besides, perhaps someone is just playing a prank! Then again... perhaps someone is NOT playing a prank.

A hyper-efficient, high-octane, female stockbroker, played by Denise Crosby, happens to be in the coffeehouse when Anthony Edwards staggers dazedly in. She assesses the situation, and decides to IMMEDIATELY hire a jet airplane to take her, and whoever can keep up with her, to the extreme southern hemisphere. (Radiation is expected to be a little less awful there, in most nuclear war scenarios). She behaves how people SHOULD behave in a situation like this -- efficiently, swiftly, decisively. But how many of her fellow mortals can live up to her excellent standards?

The answer is, basically, none. Total panic engulfs the entire city in a matter of minutes, as news spreads about the phone call. Most terrifyingly, no one seems capable of doing the one thing that they must do, which is simply to drop everything and flee immediately. Everyone keeps thinking of that one more thing they "need" to do, before seeking shelter outside the city. Eventually... well, I'll let you see for yourself.

This is a terrifying movie. For another film that is very similar, but even more graphic, I recommend that you look for the 1984 British TV-movie "Threads," witten by Barry Hines. "Threads" can be found on the British Amazon.com, or in online auction houses if you search for the two terms "threads" and "war" together, in the fields for VHS or DVDs. If you'd like some real, serious information about about nuclear war, (which hardly anyone seems to possess), try "The Cold and The Dark: The World after Nuclear War" by Paul Ehrlich and Carl Sagan, with a forword by Lewis Thomas. You could also read "Planet Earth in Jeopardy: Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War," by Lydia Dotto.

When I first rented this movie in the early 1990s I wanted to buy it, but it was out-of-print on VHS. I figured I would never be able to purchase it, but the world of DVD has changed that. Thankfully, its release on DVD is a very welcome addition to my cinematic library.

Anthony Edwards, best known for his portrayal of Goose in TOP GUN, plays an everyday guy. Mare Winningham plays an everyday girl. The two fall in love & look like they're well on their way to living happily ever after when their Romantic interlude is interrupted by a nuclear war.

There is nothing more heartbreaking than a terminally ill person who has only weeks or months to live. Situations like that bring out the best in all of us. We treat that person like royalty as we know they will not have a tomorrow; every moment counts.

However, in a grotesque world where EVERYONE is terminally ill, with only hours or perhaps minutes to live, things don't work like that. Instead what you end up with is anarchy & absolute mayhem. It is this snapshot of the death throes of a civilization that forms the centerpiece of this movie's plot.

The film has some very nice symbolism. I particularly liked the obvious parallel between the end of mankind and the demise of the dinosaurs. The scene of the two being trapped in the helicopter is a nice touch as well as it brings out the clausterphobic terror of a nuclear war. Quite simply, there IS no place to run to, and there is no escape.

At the beginning of the film, inside a museum of Natural History, there is a voiceover on a presentation of the history of the universe. A 15-20 billion year old universe, a 4 & 1/2 year old planet, sundry lifeforms that have taken millions of years to evolve. The film is noteworthy for how it makes one realize that nearly every species on earth could be wiped on in a matter of days.

While the Cold War is now over & terrorism is the new threat that has emerged to cause us all anxiety, this movie remains a classic. I cannot help but think that the human race is not "out of the woods" as far as a nuclear arms race goes. Someday there will likely be a country that will stockpile enough nukes to take the place of Russia as a nuclear weapons rival. If / when that happens, MIRACLE MILE will have more relevance to our day-to-day lives than ever.

Miracle Mile is one of those unique and savagely brilliant films that has never quite gotten its due despite seeming to leave an undeniable impression on just about everyone who has somehow lucked into seeing it. The low-budget film tells the story of an L.A. jazz musician (Anthony Edwards), a nice, mild guy who is lucky enough to not only meet the woman of his dreams (Mare Winningham) but to convince her to go out on a date with him later in the night. He is also unlucky enough to end up oversleeping and missing their date. Still, he drives out to the diner where they were supposed to meet on the slim hope that maybe she's stuck around for a few extra hours waiting for him. And while she hasn't, Edwards does arrive just in time to answer a pay phone and discover that, in just a few more hours, Los Angeles is going to be destroyed in the first nuclear strike of World War III. The rest of the film follows Edwards comically hapless yet touchingly sincere efforts to both reunite with Winningham and to get out of L.A. in the small amount of time he has before the bombs start falling. What starts as a hilarious comedy of errors becomes an all-to-realistic portrait of absurd tragedy as the film reaches it's unavoidable conclusion. The film's power comes from just how seamlessly the film handles the transition from comedy to tragedy (often times shifting between the two a couple of hundred times in the course of just one scene) -- a tonal combination that may, at first, seem like a contradiction but one that accurately reflects the feelings that many of us felt, during the Cold War, growing up with the constant possibility of sudden nuclear holocaust in the back of our minds. Director Steve DeJarnett handles the film with just the right touch, never going overboard on either the comedy or the pathos. Though she doesn't have much to do beyond being sweetly perfect, Mare Winningham proves herself to be the perfect actress for the job. In Anthony Edwards, DeJarnett was lucky to find the perfect leading man for his story. Long before ER made him famous, Edwards here embodies the elusive concept of the everyman. Neither a super hero or a total schlub, Edwards is totally winning and believable as a guy who is both unlucky in love and fate. Watching him, you know that he's not the type of action hero who can prevent a nuclear war but you also know that he's not the type of guy who's willing to allow the world to end without first finding true love. In short, he's just like you and that's what makes Miracle Mile such a powerful and affecting little film.

This is a good film but for those of you looking for a widescreen version of it you are wasting your time. Miracle Mile was shot in "academy square 35mm open matte" which is an aspect ratio of 1:37:1, not 1:85:1 or 2:35:1. 1:37 is close to TV's 1:33 ratio meaning that you are getting more of the image from the original camera negative on the DVD transfer than was originally shown in theatres which would have been cropped with black bars to 1:85 to suit theatre screens thereby losing some picture info.

But, nearly the entire film neg image is tranferred for the 4:3 dvd transfer. For theatre this film was cropped to 1:85 -so image info was actually lost in theaters for this film. This was the same procedure used for Kubrick's last 4 films -the 4:3 transfers are the full image. The film was shot basically like a T.V. film. The transfer is not a pan & scan, there is no need to p&s when the whole neg image is transferred, like on the original vhs.

There is almost no image loss.

Be happy with it.

MIRACLE MILE is above all a love story; boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boys runs frantically around L.A. trying to get heavily sedated girl on an airplane bound for the antarctic. But perhaps I should start at the beginning as Harry Washello does when he tells his story of how he came to meet his perfect girl after 30 lonely years on planet earth, and I'm not kidding--he really goes back to the beginning. To the very dawn of creation in fact, 15 billion years ago when a tremendous burst of pure energy spread swirling clouds of star stuff that eventually formed the galaxies. I'll skip the next few billion years of planet formation, evolution etc to get down to the real business at hand--the day Harry met Julie Peters at the La Brea tar pits' museum. It was love at first sight, and it was in some ways both the best thing and the worst thing that every happened to them both.They spent the rest of the day together doing the type of things that only people falling in love in movies do; riding a carousel, liberating lobsters from a restaurant tank, and so forth. Later that night, when Julia got off her job at Johnnie's Diner, they planned to go dancing.

Harry goes back to his hotel to get some sleep before their big date, and before lying down he casually tosses a cigarette off his balcony. This one insignificant act will change the course of the rest of his life and hundreds of thousands of others. A bird carries off the still smouldering cigarette to use in its nest which then catches fire and knocks out the electricity in Harry's building. By the time the power is restored and his clock finally goes off, he is 3 hours late for his date with Julie. On the off-hand chance that she might still be there, he races off to the diner. His car bumps into a palm tree in the parking lot eeriely dislodging four or five rats onto the hood of his car. Out front of the diner the neighborhood psychotic is raving about whatever those guys rave about. The phone in the phonebooth is ringing. Julie is nowhere to be seen. She long ago went home to the condo she shares with her grandmother and took a nice heavy dose of valium.

In another one of those life altering twists of fate Harry winds up answering the ringing pay phone, and what he hears on the other end of the line sends him staggering into the coffee shop. The man on the other end of the line, Chip, was nearly hysterical. He thought he was calling his father, but it was obviously a wrong number--he had dialed the wrong area code. He had said that we had fired our missiles in a pre-emptive strike and that we would be getting it back in an hour and ten. He was talking about nuclear war! "Tell Dad I'm sorry about that summer!" And then there was a commotion, gun fire, and another voice came on the line and said, "Forget everything you just heard and go back to sleep." Only one person in the coffee shop takes what Harry has to say the least bit seriously, a regular patron named Landa, a woman who obviously has a bit of money and whose opinion everyone seems to respect. She asks Harry to repeat exactly what he heard, and its more than enough to convince her. She makes a few telephone calls of her own and then then announces that "4 out of 5 of her friends are in transit to the extreme southern hemisphere" which she finds more than a mere coincidence. Before you can say "make a plan" Landa is making one. And anyone who can keep up with her is welcome to go along. The plan? Meet at The Mutual Benefit Life Building and take a helicopter to the airport and then a plane to the antarctic where there will be plenty of snow for water, rainfall is negligible, and fallout will be at a minimum.With Landa's acceptance of the phone call as fact, chaos and panic breaks out in the diner.

Not everyone is buying all of this however. The local drag queen points out Los Angeles is crammed full of actors with insomnia and nothing better to do than pull elaborate pranks. Just exactly who is Landa, we and some of the characters wonder? Could she just be another part of a highly involved prank? Are we supposed to take her word as gospel because she dated a guy who worked for the Rand Corporation? It doesn't matter, everyone else believes her. She even has two people making a list of "great minds" who should be contacted in order to make the trip with them. Their highly dated list includes "Tom and Jane. Danny Berrigan and his brother, Bobby Seale, Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, and Oprah. Say, has anybody got their phone numbers?" They've all crammed into the diner's catering van, promising Harry that they'll pick up Julie on the way--which, of course, is a lie. So Harry bails out as they slow down on the freeway ramp and heads back in the general direction of Julie's condo--he can't leave his one in a million girl to die in a nuclear holocaust.

MIRACLE MILE is very simply the most frightening, touching, funny, thought provoking, romantic,(did I say frightening?) movie you are ever going to see. Writer/director Steve DeJarnatt has crafted a nearly perfect film that keeps you wondering up until the very end whether Harry is truly the harbinger of doom or the first victim of a horrible prank, a real life Chicken Little whose unwitting participation in a very sick joke will cause the death of countless numbers of innocent people. He's aided by a cast that can't help but elict the audience's immediate sympathies. Anthony Edwards plays the likeable, good natured Harry Washello who is very much the everyman, unable to control the events around him but determined to at least be with the woman he loves now that he has finally found her. Mare Winningham has that sort of oddball vibe that is needed for the role of a woman who can fall in love at first sight, and she is charmingly kookie as Julie. The only other characters of any real consequence are Julie's embittered grandparents (played by John Agar and Lou Hancock) who haven't spoken for 15 years but are as much in love as ever, and Mykel T. Williamson as a petty crook who named Wilson who gets caught up in Harry's nightmare via a chance meeting on a freeway ramp. Even the film's musical score by Tangerine Dream, which is something I ordinarily would never even notice much less mention, is exceptionally effective. It deserves special recognition for creating the tense and eerie mood that enables the film to succeed in hitting us where we live.

SPOLIER SECTION

The ending of this film is beautifully constructed, it takes us right back to the beginning in every sense. Not only are we back in the La Brea tar pits, not only are we seeing the end of our own species as we saw the end of the dinosaurs and the mammoths portrayed earlier, we are also back to the beginning of Harry and Julie's relationship--back to the place where they first met, and maybe we are also back to the dawn of creation in a sense as well.

Trying to calm Julie who is hysterical as the helicopter sinks into the tar pit Harry says hopefully, "Maybe we'll take a direct hit! It'll metamorphosize us. Superman, he can take a lump of coal, he can squeeze it and make a diamond."

Julie: "Us, diamonds?"

Then there's a tremendous burst of pure energy.

I saw this film in the cinema many years ago. Now, with the DVD, i have the chance of see again this film like in the cinema: ERROR!!! The film is presented in Pan & Scan format, then arround 50% of the image is lost. This can't pass in an era of technology. These DVD can't be selled because are a insult to the creators of the film and to those audience that like the cinema art. Don't buy this DVD if you like to see movies like in the cinema.

I had seen this movie a decade or so ago on cable and I never seen it in the video stores or on cable since. I happen to catch it on the Love Stories Network. The movie had suspence, drama, and a certain urgency one rarely encounters in movies these days. The movie's special effects and stunts were very well staged. They conveyed a sense of the possible mayhem and anarchy that may result during the prelude to a nuclear attack. It makes one realize how fragile civilization can be in lieu of a catastrophic disaster. I was very disappointed that the movie was not in DVD. I would love to had bought it and been able to see it in a widescreen format. Oh well, maybe the future will be kind and give us this great film in DVD. A truly magnificient film that did not get the hype it deserved.

It genuinely hurts not to be able to give this, one of the most perfect films about nuclear apocalypse, only four stars ..... but I am totally in concurrence with the other reviewers who are disappointed that MGM chose to release this title in full frame format, rather than theatrical widescreen. On the other hand, it's just good to see it available again at all.

As the film opens, our protagonist Harry practices his trombone into the West L.A. evening skyline and reflects on how he had, earlier that day, finally met Julie, the girl of his dreams. "Where do I begin?" he asks in the voice over ..... then we cut to a video about the beginning of life in the universe he is watching at the Museum of Natural History. What follows is a quirky and genuinely sweet romantic unfolding, starting with a chance meeting at the museum, discovering unique mutual interests, meeting the family at a concert in the park, and ending the date with a rather explicit promise of the passions to come on the next date.

But a cruel twist of fate makes Harry late to that next date. When he arrives at the all night cafe where Julie waitresses, he intercepts a call in a phone booth that was intended for someone else, learning that the U.S military has launched a secret preemptive nuclear missile strike on an unnamed nation. The frantic caller barely has time to tell Harry that we would be "getting it back" in just under an hour ..... before he is silenced by the sound of gunfire. Then Harry hears a different voice tell him to forget everything he just heard, and go back to sleep.

Once Harry has shared this unpleasant revelation with the other early morning cafe patrons, they throw together whatever they can on the spot, cram into the owner's truck and head to the airport to catch the next plane to Antarctica .... but Harry can't bear the idea of leaving without Julie, and bails out to look for her. What follows is a sometimes comical, other times surreal, accumulative nightmare as Harry desperately tries to reunite with his lady love and escape before the unthinkable happens. As word gets out on the impending disaster, the city of Los Angeles is transformed into a madhouse of terrified mobs, gridlocked autos and others bound to fellow humans they can't leave behind. Sometimes just getting out of town is not as simple as it seems it should be .....

Steve de Jarnatt wrote and directed this seamless thriller in 1988, and it was one of those positively (but somehow not widely) received releases that kind of came and went in the theaters. There is a lot of subtle humor that would probably appeal mostly to Angelenos, but the sweet and ultimately desperate romance at the core of this tailspin tale has a universal appeal, I think even to the not-romantically inclined. There are parts that smack of Hitchcock (the scene in the cafe where Harry agonizes over how to reveal this terrible discovery amidst the mundane goings ons), and de Jarnatt has indeed fashioned a bona fide classic here. It is very timely in light of recent events, weaves a shattering vision of the Powers That Be robbing us of the freedom to just live and love without fear, as well as gives us a cautionary look at how society at large would deal with such an event. At the film's less than optimistic finish, we are left with a sense of how precious life can be, if only in the few final moments.

Miracle Mile is one of those thrill rides that will make you think and haunt you when it's over .... and had the company that released it given the title the treatment it deserves, this reviewer would have awarded it six stars. It will no doubt find a higher place of honor once our nation adopts a somewhat more responsible stance on military aggression. Until that time, I suppose a good smart adrenaline rush is sufficient.

* solo * aug 2003 *

The only thing preventing me from giving the "Miracle Mile" DVD five stars is its disappointing presentation. The newly-released DVD is presented in fullscreen format only, with no option for widescreen. There are no special features to speak of, other than the original theatrical trailer for the movie. There's nothing, in a word, that would tell you much about what makes this film really unique. As one of my favorite movies, I was hoping for better from the DVD release of it. Still, I'm happy to see the DVD, as my ten-year-old videotape copy has seen better days, and this should at least last me a little longer. That doesn't mean I won't be hoping for (at least) a widescreen release of "Miracle Mile" at some point in the future!

But enough about the DVD. I'd much rather talk about the movie, as it's an excellent one.

"Miracle Mile" starts out with a pretty simple premise: Harry Washello (played by a very young Anthony Edwards) meets Julie (Mare Winningham) at a museum. They begin to go out, and Harry becomes convinced that she's the girl for him. An unfortunate series of circumstances makes him very late for their third date. Harry tries to call her from a phone booth, and right after he hangs up, the phone rings. He picks it up. A frantic voice on the other end tells Harry that nuclear war has begun, and that there's a little more than an hour before it's all over.

That's when the movie really begins.

Harry doesn't know what to make of the phone call at first. It could be a prank, but it sounded real to him. When he tells others about it, their reactions range from anger to fear to disbelief. The rest of the film becomes an almost-real-time race to try to escape Los Angeles, as Harry tries desperately to find Julie and get her out of the city. Events quickly escalate as more and more people start to learn about the rumours of impending nuclear attack.

The incredible thing is that, for all its trappings as a thriller, what makes "Miracle Mile" so great is how it works as a character study. Harry, generally a good guy, lies and misleads in order to acheive his goals of finding Julie and getting out of the city. Julie, largely clueless about what's going on until near the end of the film, is a well-drawn character with some nice twists. The way she deals with the news is completely believable. A tangential story to the main plot, about Julie's estranged grandparents, is both touching and heartbreaking. The other characters in the story, some of which we only meet for a few minutes, others who show up more than once, are all paid equal attention, and could clearly tell their own stories. I'm always impressed when I watch "Miracle Mile" at how believable each of the characters is... they're not throwaway cardboard cutouts and they're not cliches. They're each people you might see walking down the street at any given time of the day, particularly 4 in the morning.

That said, "Miracle Mile" is still a great thriller, one which will keep you guessing until the end. And when the end comes (no, I'm NOT going to tell you what happens), it'll leave you thinking for quite some time afterwards. I've watched this film 20 times or more, and it always leaves me the same way: a little stunned, a little sad, and very impressed.

"Miracle Mile" has been one of my favorite movies for 15 years now, and will likely be a favorite for a long time to come, because it manages to be a skillful character study and a compelling, original thriller at the same time. There are very few films that make this combination work for them, but "Miracle Mile" accomplishes the task admirably.

I do wish they'd put out a better DVD, though. The film is certainly worth the best presentation they can give it.

I am fascinated by this film. From the time of the phone call outside the diner you are riveted to the screen. It is exactly how I would see this happening if we were to get involved in a nuclear war, the panic and fear, etc. It is the best film I have ever seen regarding nuclear war.