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Miracle Mile (1988)

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30 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
'Forget everything you just heard, and go back to sleep', 30. August 2002
Author: Vermithrax von Who cares? The Nukes are coming!! RUN!!!

*click*

As the phone went dead, my heart almost stopped as I watched Harry's expression.

I have known of this obscure thriller for years, and it gets better every time I see it.

'Miracle Mile' is an apocalyptic classic. As many other user comments have indicated, the film portrays mass hysteria and panic due to an impending nuclear attack. At first only Harry (Anthony Edwards) knows about it, and then tells a handful of citizens with such urgency that they have no choice but to believe him. From there the word spreads gradually, and impending doom really sets in. The streets break out into riots, and people just go absolutely nuts. All this while, Harry and his girlfriend Julie and desperately trying to get to a helicopter platform so they can escape to the extreme north. Problem is, many others have that idea as well.

Sounds a bit far-fetched? Perhaps, but the film's anticipation never seems to let up. This is an extremely enjoyable film that makes you think of your own immediate values. I mean, what WOULD you do in that situation? Would you just sit and wait for it? or would you (attempt to) flee? After viewing this film, you ask yourself these questions.

A forgotten gem that deserves the full anamorphic DVD treatment. It's an 80's movie, so it's not without it's corny moments and the somewhat cheesy format. But these things don't really matter as the film portrays panic so perfectly. If such an event (god forbid) was to actually occur, I believe the chaos on the streets would look just like the film.

I've seen some very negative comments on the film, and everyone is entitled to an opinion. But what can I say? I consider this a classic of sorts.

9/10

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17 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
what starts like a bad made-for-TV movie turns into a compelling character-driven sci-fi horror, 3. April 2004

Author: sdsalsero von California

I first saw this movie on video around the time it was produced. I immediately liked it even though it was a bit bleak. But the late 80's were full of apocalyptic nuclear holocaust movies and this was the only one that stayed with me. Now, years later, I've just rewatched it (this time on DVD) and I still think it's a very good -- but not great -- movie.

Admittedly, there's some over-the-top 80's haircuts and costumes, stuff that would be seriously 'retro' nowadays. And the acting, particularly in the beginning, is 'obvious' and a bit tiring. But when the hero receives that fateful phone call, it all changes. Suddenly, it's like watching a stage-performance of a play, a pressure-cooker where everyone suspects everyone else and no one knows what's really going on.

In fact, one of the best parts of the screenplay is that we, the audience, also don't really know what to believe (until the very end). We watch the hero struggle with what to tell people who's help he needs: if he tells them the awful truth, they may not believe/help him; if he tells them a more believable lie, is he denying them the chance to survive or at least to die with their loved ones. Either way, both he and the people he meets turn to progressively more and more extreme behavior -- people die! . . . and what if it all turns-out to have been a hoax?

In all, I think this movie ranks as a great sci-fi film, and in the truest sense of the genre: What If. It's not about aliens or galactic empires or anything else that's more fantasy than reality. Instead, it's a situation that any of us could easily imagine and I think this is why it stayed with me all these years, why it now forms a part of the framework for my imagination whenever I find myself catastrophizing about terrorism or natural disaster, anything that could separate me from the ones I love. What would I do?

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15 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
What a surprise! After a shaky start this taut thriller really sucks you in!, 7. Mai 2003
Author: Infofreak von Perth, Australia

I didn't hold high hopes for 'Miracle Mile'. Directed by Steve De Jarnatt who made the cheesy but fun 'Cherry 2000', and starring two actors (Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham) that I feel at best indifferent about, it starts off almost like a John Hughes romantic comedy, and your finger might begin to hover off the "off" button. But if you persevere it quickly becomes an utterly compelling thriller. It requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief to accept the premise of the movie, but once the story kicks in you really get sucked into it! Edwards is actually very good in the lead role, and the film is full of all kinds of familiar faces and character actors like Mykelti Williamson ('Truth Or Consequences, NM'), Denise Crosby ('Star Trek TNG'), Robert DoQui ('RoboCop'), even b-grade SF legend John Agar ('The Brain From Planet Arous'), and 'Reservoir Dogs' Mr. Blue Edward Bunker! This movie really seems to split people down the middle. Some hate it, some love it. I'm in the latter camp. Highly recommended!

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
GREAT COLD-WAR MOVIE , DATED BUT KEEPS HAUNTING ME,SO SAD......, 7. Juli 2003

Author: spanky6666 von Belgium

Hello there,

You're definitely interested in this movie if you've got this far on the IMDB...

If you're, like me, a child of the 80's (teenager in the 80's) who saw this movie in the cinema's with that great soundtrack from "Tangerin Dream" in it(in the middle of the cold war),than you really are going to like this movie... I was able to track down this movie on PAL VHS-Tape on Ebay(you can buy it on DVD now,zone 1 only) and saw it last night on my own again. Ok,I'll have to admit that it's dated now (look at the clothes...)but that same sad feeling that creeps slowly into your head while watching this movie is still there! I really hope with the whole of my heart that we never,and I say NEVER,have to witness the day that our chosen leaders make the same stupid mistake of launching a nuclear attack on a country like they do in this movie... This is not your typical big budget,special effects loaded action-vehicle about a full-on nuclear strike but a modest little movie about what happens to a small bunch of people that finds out by accident that their country (USA) has launched a nuclear attack against another unspecified country and are getting back what they've started....

If you have your heart at the right place,then this movie grabs you by the throat and won't let go...

On the other handiIf you ONLY like comedy's and big budget action movies(which I also like very much)then you're probably going to despise this one...

Go now and find this little gem of a movie,I know you want to...

Cheers,

Dirk

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11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Very Strange Movie, 24. November 2003
Author: rikitiki von Los Angeles, CA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"Miracle Mile" is a strange movie. It begins as a love story, abruptly switches to suspense (the phone call), swerves into unintentional comedy(the cafe scenes), and suddenly shocks with the flaming deaths of two police officers. I couldn't decide whether it was a "tongue-in-cheek" comedy or a serious drama until the police officers died. But the continuing over-the-top acting pointed toward a comedy, but characters continued to die. It wasn't until the department store scene that I realized the movie was dead serious, and I was overcome with dread.

I had assumed the original phone call was a hoax, perhaps a scene acted from a movie played over the phone, and a peaceful resolution would end the move. With the flaming gas station scene, I was confused - how could this movie end without Edward's character dying for indirectly causing deaths.

Either the director was incompetently unfolding the plot, or he was deliberately keeping the audience off balance, to emphasize the air of unreality a real nuclear attack would bring.

This movie "worked" because of it's uneveness, suddenly throwing me from my expectation of a comedy, to anxiously awaiting a satisfactory plot resolution, then being sent to a shocking realization the nuclear war was "real".

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Chilling!, 10. November 2004
Author: chuck ballew von Burbank , Ca

The thing that makes this movie particularly effective is that it feels just like a dream. I've had nuclear holocaust dreams all my life, and when I watched this movie I felt like I was dreaming. I really connected emotionally with the main character. He's a nerd who has suddenly met the girl of his dreams, a nerdy, cute girl with glasses and a sweet demeanor, and at that precise moment the world appears as if it is going to come to an end! And he's not going to get a chance to even kiss her before the world goes poof! hey, it's bad enough to die, but to die with an unfulfilled love is truly nightmarish!

The movie is not exactly illogical, but follows a sort of dream logic, where things just get worse and worse, relentlessly, and the harder you try to run away, the slower you move. The ending is devastating, horrifying and heart warming all at the same time.

After seeing this movie for the first time I shivered for hours, and couldn't bring myself to watch it again for 12 years! Its not that I didn't like it, I just knew that if I saw it again I would lose that special thrilling fear that it instilled in me. But it was so powerful that when i did see it 12 years later I remembered every plot, every character and event. On one viewing it imprinted itself on my brain, which movies hardly ever do.

See it! And see it late at night in a dark room!

cb

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The best real-time thriller ever made, 22. September 2004
Author: Justin Edgar von Birmingham, England

Miracle Mile is one of my favourite films -I know it has its rough edges but I fell in love the first time I saw it at the University of Portsmouth film society ten years ago. I can't quite understand why though.

It belongs to the genre of suspense films called real-time thrillers -Hitchcock's Rope and Nick of Time are other examples. These are films which explore the very nature of film as a time-based medium. Usually the device is used in suspense movies, but has become popular recently in art house cinema like Timecode and Russian Ark.

The set-up is simple -after a day when he has fallen in love at first sight, Harry Washello randomly answers a ringing phone at a phone booth. The call is a wrong number from a soldier stationed at a nuclear silo. He is trying to warn his father that a nuclear strike has been launched and the US will be face a retaliatory attack in eighty minutes time. From then on, the action is played out in real time.

Unlike the aforementioned examples and the execrable 24, the real time actually works in Miracle Mile. If you sit through it with a stop watch, it only ever drifts out by a few seconds. The real time is essential to holding suspense and sympathy with the characters. Was the phone call for real? We don't know until an unforgettable moment, when the film becomes a race for survival.

There are some great, truly profound images -such as the dying Wilson scrambling up the down escalator with the body of his sister, or Harry and Julie lost in a department store surrounded by ticking clocks. This attention to detail and the bizarrely dark tone of the film elevate it to cult status. It has a soul and an individuality all of its own -can you imagine an episode of 24 ever being scored by Tangerine Dream?

This is a film about chance -the chance of Harry falling in love that day, the chance of him picking up the phone. The chance that effects us all and how we are at the mercy of it. But ultimately it is a very dark love story and perhaps that's why I like it so very much.

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14 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
The Idiot Plot, 30. Juli 2003
Author: Bneidl von U.S.A.

MILD SPOILERS

I happened upon this movie tonight on one of the premium cable channels. I was amazed that I had never heard of it. On the one hand, I appreciate how relentlessly dark this movie was willing to be, and how suspenseful it was at times. On the other hand, however, the movie relied too often on the stupid behavior of the principal characters to create tension. Roger Ebert has often complained of the "Idiot Plot": a film storyline that would be over within minutes if the characters were not complete idiots. In "Miracle Mile," Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham create a lot of their own obstacles just by making rock-stupid, and highly unrealistic decisions. Example: Anthony Edwards wants to find Winningham and bring her to the helipad so that they can escape L.A. before the nuclear holocaust. Instead of telling Winningham what is actually happening, Edwards decides she shouldn't hear the bad news "until she has to," so instead he tells her that they are going to go on a hot air balloon ride as a sort of romantic getaway (even though it is 4:00 a.m.) That's pretty stupid. Even more stupid is that Winningham believes him. Then, when they arrive at the rooftop helipad, Edwards realizes that he hasn't booked a helicopter pilot to, you know, actually fly the helicopter. Edwards then decides that he will find a helicopter pilot on the streets of L.A., in the middle of the night, with a scant 20 minutes or so before he knows the missiles are going to hit. Better still, he decides not to tell Winningham where he is going or why (she still has no idea the end is nigh). He just tells her, "I'll be right back, don't MOVE!" Of course, we know that this means she WILL move the moment he is gone. Sure enough, while he's off looking for a pilot in an all-night gym (and actually finds one!), Winningham decides that it would be a good time to take a stroll. So, now Edwards has to find her all over again, get back to the helipad all over again, and we have to watch this whole damn process all over again, just because he was too stupid to behave like a person of ordinary competence. And beyond this, Edwards continuously wastes time in this movie when he has none to waste. It's one of those films where you are well aware that time is running out, but the main characters still stop and stare at each other longingly at inappropriate times. These two characters absolutely deserved the fate that meets them at the movie's unbelievably dark conclusion.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Movie., 5. Januar 2003
Author: Battlebots von Pennsylvania USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SPOILER!!!!! Still have the original laser disc version. I view this movie once a year at least. It was highly underrated. The real time aspect was unusual and kept the viewer in suspense right up to the end.

It certainly makes you ask yourself the question "What would I do if I had the information Harry had?"

Harry had it made, he was on his way to the airport to escape nuclear war, then he stops to save the woman he loves. Would you do the same or would you save yourself.

Considering the short time remaining and the long odds of making it to the airport in time after who knows how long it would take to find the girl and make it to the airport, I really don't know what I would do. Had they both remained at the heliport, they both would have survived.

The ending was sort of depressing as you wanted them to make it. On the other hand the first plane does make it off the ground before the nukes hit as the Vietnam vet pilot points out (how he knew the plane flying overhead was theirs is beyond me). If Harry had stayed on the catering truck he probably would have had a good chance with Landa or those 2 women with the machine guns.

I wish they had made a sequel so we could have found out what happened to the people on the plane that made it out. Making it to Anarctica would have been dicey at best considering they would need to refuel at least once and the people of South America might not take kindly to Yankees from America (who had just blown up the Northern Hemisphere bringing on nuclear winter) landing in their countries. But that is an untold story...

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
It took guts to make this movie, 24. Juni 2002
Author: te7h von Los Angeles

A story that begins like a romantic comedy and goes somewhere else. A disjointed plot, producing emotional confusion in those simple souls who go to the movies to have a piece of candy handed to them. It took courage to do this, and the result is an artistic success of the highest calibre.

The box-office story was probably not so good, but shame on those critics who helped send this movie to oblivion. Someday the Internet or something is going to bring back those few movies that stirred our emotions instead of putting them to sleep. There is no personified villain here. Time is the enemy, and The Bomb. How does it make you feel to be tricked? Maybe you deserve it. After all those countless, harmless, villains who've walked across your screen to fall like rags, here's a movie to shake you up instead. Oh never mind, just go back to sleep.

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