Okay, a few of you may have seen this, and it's not exactly that rare, although you won't find it without looking for a bit.
However.
With big budget mindless drivel like 2012 floating around and boasting mind boggling special effects, (most likely to divert your attention from the lack of a coherent plot or anything resembling character development) sometimes the filmgoer feels the need for a palate cleanser.
Thus i present Miracle Mile for your consideration.
We start with a new couple, Harry (Anthony Edwards, from ER and Revenge of the Nerds) and Julie (Mare Winningham, Threshold, St Elmo's Fire) as they go thru the things that new couples do and hit it off.
While Julie is not that well fleshed out as a character, you do find a kind of sympathy as she is forced to deal with her estranged parents who refused to see each other, she really isn't given much to work with as a character, but that's okay as it's Harry who really is the center of the film.
Harry has agreed to meet Julie at an all night diner and a rolling power outage screws up Harry's alarm clock. Julie gets pissed and goes home, while Harry arrives hours late, and thus finds himself alone outside the diner feeling as if his world has come to a shuddering halt, the girl of his dreams (Okay, so he's got simple tastes, but their relationship really isn't the high point of the film, so bear with me...) has taken off...
... And then the phone rings.
This is where the film starts for me.
With all the conspiracy themed doomsday films, or the downtrodden scientists that "discover" the signs/signal/evidence, while tapping away on their laptop, and suddenly has to be the 'voice' that sets the events in motion, with lotsa montages of military troops getting prepared, VIPs looking oh so serious, and plans being made, this film takes a different, and to me, more realistic tone.
Harry wanders into the diner and starts babbling about the crazy phone call that he just had.
This sets into motion a series of events that create citywide panic, and that is where the film differs from so many other apocalyptic films.
Most "everyday" type characters essentially are nothing of the kind. They are driven by a need to save everyone that they can, to alert the world to the dangers on the way. There is usually an ex wife and a kid, probably a stepdad in the way as well, but we know that he'll get his wife back, be his kid's hero, and the stepdad will, by some "unforseen" event get smacked to the side, or the wife will simply realize that our hero was the one for her all along.
I see this basic plot in a film, especially a disaster/end of the world film, and my bullshit radar starts making a clacking drone, much like the angry bug drone of a 50s era geiger counter.
Harry simply wants to get his girlfriend and get out of town. When he tells people, the consequences have very bad results.
People panic, people die, and Harry feels the full weight of it on his shoulders.
Of all the roles I've seen Anthony Edwards in, this is by far his best. He shows a sensitive everyman far from the stereotypical hollywood good guy, and gives Harry a soul, a sense of "real person" grounding the film and making us honestly care.
There are no dirtbag "bad guys" to overcome, no cute kids or dogs that will somehow make it with some plucky luck and some contrived "in danger" scenario to make it thru.
It's a simple story, but when you strip away the standard tropes that plague most of this genre, you find a compelling and riveting journey thru a cityscape that becomes eerie and increasingly surreal and violent.
Within a few hours, Harry finds himself in an altercation with the police, driving a stolen police car, making unlikely friends, finally finds Julie (who has taken a few valium and is pretty much out of it.) and races desperately to get to the top of the tower, hoping against hope that the helicopter hasn't left them behind.
As the movie progresses, we begin to see signs of a panic settling into the sleepy early morning streets until the city explodes into full panic.
During this whole time, there are little hints, questions that perhaps the phone call might have been a hoax, that the missiles haven't been launched, that this was all some kind of misunderstanding.
The panic sets in, and it's infectious, and we see our modern civilization reduced to absolute chaos and unrestrained violence, as people try desperately to make a mad dash out of town.
It makes you think about your own town, where would you go? How would you escape? Would you simply find a loved one and curl up with them and hold them as the bombs dropped.
Is the instinct to survive enough?
I find myself questioning what I would do, do I try and gather my family up and make an escape? Would I lose hope? Would I try and spend what little time I had telling them all the things that I wish I would have said, or would I take them and run, hoping against reason that a chance, however slim, might exist?
Harry and Julie make it to the high rise, as Harry begins to have the doubts of what has happened, has he caused all this?
Would it have been better to ignore it, let the city sleep unawares, live the remaining hours without the violent anarchy of which Harry now feels he is the architect?
On the roof, we meet Gerstead (Kurt Fuller; Waynes World, Auto Focus ) drunk and meeting his own demise the way most of us would like to say we would, cheering and yelling as trails of missiles stream across the sky, confirming Harry's belief and letting the audience know that the end is upon them.
The Helicopter is nowhere to be seen until the last moment when we see it come in, the pilot (Brian Thompson; Cobra, The X Files) bleeding from injuries, and our couple are lifted into the air, as the first nuclear blast happens, ending Gerstead's revelries and knocking out the helicopter power thru an EMP.
They crash into the La Brea tar pits, sinking beneath the surface, Harry trying to the last to calm down Julie, explaining how in a million years they would become a diamond, a thing of beauty.
"People always think they have so much time... to do all the things they'd like to do..."
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