Miracle Mile (film)  

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Miracle Mile is a 1988 American apocalyptic thriller film written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt, and starring Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. The film takes place mostly in real time. It is titled after the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles, where most of the action takes place.

Plot

The film takes place in a single day and night. The film opens with the two main characters, Harry (Anthony Edwards) and Julie (Mare Winningham), meeting at the La Brea Tar Pits and immediately falling in love. After spending the afternoon together, they make a date to meet after her shift ends at midnight at a local coffee shop, but a power failure means Harry's alarm fails to wake him and Julie leaves for home.

When Harry awakes that night he realizes what has happened and rushes to the shop, arriving at 4 AM. Harry tries to call Julie on a payphone, but only reaches her answering machine, where he leaves an apology. When the phone rings moments later he picks it up, hearing a frantic man named Chip telling his father that war is about to break out in less than seventy minutes. When Harry finally gets a chance to talk and asks who is calling, Chip realizes he has dialed the wrong area code. Chip then pleads with Harry to call his father and apologize for some past wrong before he is being confronted and presumably shot. An unfamiliar voice picks up the phone and tells Harry to forget everything he heard "and go back to sleep" before disconnecting.

Harry, confused and not entirely convinced of the reality of the information, wanders back into the diner and tells the other customers what he has heard. As the patrons scoff at his story, one of them, a mysterious businesswoman named Landa (Denise Crosby), calls a number of politicians in Washington on her wireless phone and finds that they are all suddenly heading for "the extreme Southern Hemisphere". After Harry tells her some launch codes that Chip told him, she verifies that they are real and, convinced of the danger, immediately charters private jets out of Los Angeles International Airport to a compound in a region in Antarctica with no rainfall. Most of the customers and staff leave with her in the owner's delivery van. When the owner refuses to make any stops, Harry, unwilling to leave without Julie, arranges to meet the group at the airport and jumps from the truck.

Harry is helped and hindered by various strangers, who are initially unaware of the impending apocalypse. In the process he inadvertently causes several deaths and is deeply shaken by that, yet still he goes on. When he finds Julie and later tells her, she notes that there is no confirmation of the attack. Desperate to reach the airport and not having a car, Harry finds a helicopter pilot (Brian Thompson) and tells him to meet them on the roof of the Mutual Benefit Life Building, where Landa ordered a helicopter and a large amount of supplies to be delivered. Julie has also tried to find a pilot on her own, and in the moments it takes to find her, Los Angeles descends into violent chaos. There is still no confirmation any of this is real, and Harry wonders if he has sparked a massive false panic in the example of Chicken Little. However, when he uses a phone booth to contact the father of the man who called him (using the number of the booth and the area code the man was trying to use), he reaches a man who says his son is a soldier. Harry tries to pass on the message he was given, but the man hangs up before Harry finishes.

When they reach the top of the Mutual Benefit building they find the pad empty, with only Landa's drunk co-worker (Kurt Fuller) on the roof. Any doubts about a false alarm are eliminated when a missile can be seen streaking across the sky. As they fear the end, the helicopter suddenly returns with the pilot badly wounded but fulfilling his promise to come back for them. After they lift off from the roof, several warheads hit and the nuclear electromagnetic pulse from the detonations causes the helicopter to crash into the La Brea pits. As the helicopter sinks and the cabin fills with natural asphalt tar, Harry tries to comfort a hysterical Julie by saying someday they will be found and they will probably be put in a museum, or maybe they will take a direct hit and be turned into diamonds. Julie, accepting her fate, calms down and takes comfort in Harry's words, and the movie fades out as the tar fills the compartment. A final explosion seems to imply a direct hit has taken place.

Cast

• Anthony Edwards as Harry Washello
• Mare Winningham as Julie Peters
• John Agar as Ivan Peters
• Lou Hancock as Lucy Peters
• Mykelti Williamson as Wilson
• Kelly Jo Minter as Charlotta
• Kurt Fuller as Gerstead
• Brian Thompson as Helicopter Pilot
• Denise Crosby as Landa
• Robert DoQui as Fred the Cook
• O-Lan Jones as Susie the Waitress
• Claude Earl Jones as Harlan
• Alan Rosenberg as Mike
• Danny De La Paz as Roger the Transvestite
• Earl Boen as Drunk Man in Diner
• Raphael Sbarge as Chip (voice)
• Lucille Bliss as Old Woman in Diner
• Diane Delano as Stewardess
• Edward Bunker as Nightwatchman
• Peter Berg as Band Member
• Richard Biggs as Brian Jones
• Jenette Goldstein as Beverly Hills Chick #1

Production

The following locations in Los Angeles were used: Johnie's Coffee Shop; La Brea Tar Pits; Miracle Mile District; Pan-Pacific Auditorium in the Fairfax District.

See also

• List of apocalyptic films
• List of films about nuclear issues
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Survival film