R-Rated Apocalyptic 80s Thriller Is A Frantic, Real-Time Race For Survival

By Robert Scucci
| Published 8 seconds ago

There’s no better way to depict the beginning of the end than to show exactly how it might happen in real time, like in 1988’s Miracle Mile. The story is a simple one about a guy learning that a full-blown nuclear war is about to kick off, and how he needs to not only convince everybody around him that he isn’t crazy, but also find the woman he just met, who may very well be the love of his life, so they can escape the apocalypse and live to see another day.

There’s not much you need to know about Miracle Mile to be sold on its premise other than the fact that this movie goes hard. Once its conflict is established, it becomes a race against the clock, resulting in an unthinkable amount of collateral damage brought on by mass hysteria.

If Only He Didn’t Pick Up The Phone

The fatalist in me has taught me not to engage in certain behavior, especially after watching too many thrillers to count. For example, if a random payphone outside of a diner rings, maybe don’t pick it up. If you don’t know what you don’t know, you can just grab a cheeseburger, not knowing it may be your last. 

Picking up the phone is exactly what Harry Washell (Anthony Edwards) does after trying to reach Julie Peters (Mare Winningham), a woman he only just met earlier in the day while visiting the La Brea Tar Pits. Harry promises to meet Julie at her late-night bartending shift after the two hit it off so well, oversleeps, and wakes up at 4:00 a.m. He makes his way to the local diner and leaves Julie a voicemail apologizing for missing their date. The second he hangs up, the pay phone rings again. He answers, and he’s greeted by a distraught man named Chip, who warns him of an incoming nuclear launch that will decimate the city.

Before Harry can extract any more information from Chip, he hears the man get shot dead, only for another man to pick up the phone and tell him to forget anything ever happened. Rightfully disturbed by the exchange, Harry enters the diner and tells everybody what he heard, which is met with understandable skepticism. When a businesswoman named Landa (Denise Crosby) all but confirms his suspicions, she makes arrangements for an evacuation via private jet, an offer that every patron immediately jumps on.

Harry, on the other hand, stays behind so he can track down Julie and meet up with them later. If the end times are kicking off on the same day he meets the woman of his dreams, he might as well rescue her. After all, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, even if the world as you know it is about to end.

A Frantic Race Against The Clock

While Miracle Mile obviously uses filmic time to seamlessly get you from point A to point B, the whole thing plays out as if it were unfolding in real time. The entire second and third acts involve Harry scrambling to find Julie and fill her in on what’s happening. If he’s successful, he can catch up with everybody from the diner and get out of the city before the bombs start dropping. While the streets are overrun with panic and bedlam, we’re still not sure if Chip’s warning is legitimate or if it simply triggered a mass panic over nothing. All signs suggest that something catastrophic is about to happen, but Miracle Mile’s on-the-street, “we don’t know what’s going on,” energy is frenetic enough to keep you guessing.

If you’ve ever had the displeasure of attending a densely populated event that suddenly needs to be evacuated, you’ll know exactly the feeling I’m talking about. It doesn’t take long for something as simple as a teenager pulling a fire alarm at a convention to be blown way out of proportion as the people living through it assume the worst. Here, the stakes are high enough, and you’re drip-fed enough clues from the story, to surmise that this could very well be the real deal.

When the going gets tough, though, Miracle Mile is not without levity. My favorite sequence involves Harry running into an all-night gym and asking every single spandex-wrapped meathead if any of them know how to fly a helicopter. What makes it so funny is that he finds exactly what he’s looking for, making you think, “Well… how convenient?”

That is not to say that Miracle Mile is a comedy. It is very much a thriller. At 87 minutes, it’s relentlessly paced and doesn’t waste a single minute of its run time. It’s also the adventure of a lifetime. At the very least, I can’t think of anything more thrilling than running through a city on the verge of destruction, saving the girl, and then jumping into a chopper while everybody below you gets reduced to ash.

To find out Harry and Julie’s fate in Miracle Mile, you can stream the film for free on Tubi as of this writing. If you’re looking for a mean and lean thriller to fill your evening, it doesn’t get much better than this.