I don’t know author David J. Moore personally, but he’s become a hero of mine in recent months. I received review copies of his beautiful hard-bound coffee table-style books World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Movies, and The Good, The Tough, And The Deadly: Action Movies & Stars 1960s-Present… and I’ve been exploring them ever since.
Now I’ll chronicle a few discoveries pulled from his apocalyptic encyclopedia of cinema: Word Gone Wild. Moore personally viewed over 800 post-apocalyptic films and television shows, reviewed each one, and assembled them into the most comprehensive volume ever released. As a fan of both cinema and ridiculously ambitious projects, I can’t help but admire this dedication, and recommend that you check out the book yourselves. Now I hope you’ll join me as I discover some “new-to-me” gems from among the rubble.
Miracle Mile is a miracle movie.
A master class in pacing and escalation, writer/director Steve De Jarnatt (Cherry 2000) crafts in Miracle Mile a John Hughes meets George Miller all-timer.
I actively hate the first sentence of this review. But I absolutely can’t scrap it. I can’t scrap it because my own personal experience of Miracle Mile is so wonderfully enjoyable and the film is so singular that I’m going to allow myself to be unrepentantly rapturous and indulgent with this piece.
There can’t be all too many 1980s apocalyptic films out there that I’ve never even heard of. Granted, I’m no David J. Moore, and I haven’t seen anywhere close to the 800+ films that he watched and reviewed for his World Gone Wild encyclopedia of apocalypse films. But I’ve generally heard of most of them and had them on my radar either since my youth when they were on the shelves at the video store, or since the advent of Netflix when I was able to gorge myself on Italian obscura available on DVD. But I’d never EVER heard of Slipstream, the first film I covered in this brief series, and the same is true for Miracle Mile. How could there be a wonderfully cast, theatrically released, prime 1980s American apocalyptic film out there like Miracle Mile that I never even knew existed? Slipstream I can understand flying under the radar. It feels like a sort of incomplete film, as enjoyable as it was for me personally. Miracle Mile is different. It’s a borderline genre masterpiece that I can’t possibly comprehend not being a much more widely known and beloved title.
Anthony Edwards (Top Gun, E.R.) and Mare Winningham (St. Elmo’s Fire, Turner & Hooch) star as a couple who begin a relationship at a museum meet-cute outside the Labrea Tar Pits. Edwards’ character (Harry) is oddly similar to Ryan Gosling’s from La La Land… a talented jazz musician who’s a bit listless and finds an erstwhile soul mate. Winningham (Julie) is charming and perhaps lacks a little bit in dimensionality if one needs to find fault in this film. This is a blossoming relationship headed towards love but only just. Then one night Harry is supposed to pick up Julie to go dancing after work, and a stroke of fate causes his electricity to go out. Missing their date, he heads to the diner where she works in the middle of the night in an attempt to get her address from a co-worker to apologize. These are the days before cell phones, after all. While at the diner, he picks up a phone call and everything changes.
Continuing with the themes of fate played with in this film, Harry receives an eerily believable phone call. It’s a call about an impending full nuclear holocaust. It’s coming from a son to a mis-dialed father. From a missile silo. And the countdown has already been set. After this phone call, what can only be described as some kind of second act short film takes place. An interesting ensemble of characters are assembled in the diner. Harry tries to reconcile what he’s just heard in his own mind, ends up telling the fellow diners, and one of the diner guests is able to make a phone call or two and further cement the likelihood of impending doom. It’s a remarkable short film in and of itself, divorced in large part from the central relationship between Harry and Julie. But it works. And we follow Harry through a series of increasingly desperate and awful scenarios as he attempts to find Julie and get to a helicopter pad that might… just might… transport them to safety. Along the way we meet up with some of the great character actors of our generation, and experience a ratcheting tension balanced perfectly by a burgeoning love that’s always earnest and never overly romanticized.
Harry and Julie prove perfect for one another, and as Los Angeles plunges into anarchy, they find a one in a million chance at true love.
Writer/Director Steve De Jarnatt has worked almost exclusively in television since the 1987/1988 one-two punch of Cherry 2000 (if all goes well, the next entry in this series) and Miracle Mile. He appears to have made a solid living for himself and that’s all anyone can ask in this business. I’d like to suggest, however, that Miracle Mile stands as an incredible, towering work of genre filmmaking that should offer De Jarnatt a lifetime pass to dabble in feature film work whenever he so desires. The blooming romance crashing head first into a looming apocalypse feels unfortunately relevant today, but more importantly the tone, balance, and pacing are all there to make this unique story stand the test of time. And a Tangerine Dream score guides us along the way to accentuate De Jarnatt’s singular journey. Why are you still reading this? We’re at Defcon 3 and I just told you there’s a Tangerine Dream score! Go track down Miracle Mile.
And I’m Out.
Miracle Mile is available on Kino Lorber Blu-ray (with 2 commentary tracks and tons of bonus features, or digital rental/purchase from Amazon.