Miracle Mile

MOVIE #1,100 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.09.23 There’s nothing THAT weird, outwardly, about this nuclear-apocalypse thriller starring Anthony Edwards in a rare main lead role. But honestly this was one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen on multiple fronts. Miracle Mile is, at once, mostly boring and totally fascinating insomuch as I was on the seat of my pants with the feeling that anything could and probably would happen. It sorta felt like the natural, nonsensical end of Cold War hysteria in moviemaking. The plot is asine. After sleeping through a nap due to a power outage, Edwards goes to the diner where he was supposed to meet a date at 4am and answers a wrong number at a payphone wherein the voice on the other end of the line calling from a missile silo, thinking he’s speaking to his father, warns him of an impending nuclear holocaust.

This sets off an increasingly chaotic series of events featuring a mix of the worst, most wooden acting from most of the supporting cast (thinking specifically of the diner inhabitants) as well as some hilariously bad (Mykelti Williamson) and hilariously good (Kurt Fuller) performances from other notable character actors…


Needless to say, this is a mess tonally. It’s mostly played like a serious disaster film but then a couple of chicks sporting uzis show up saying that it’s probably a good thing there’s no condoms on the rescue helicopter they’re attempting to board because they’ll need to repopulate the earth. Things ramp up to a fever pitch and the final end-times sequence of chaos on the streets of L.A. — featuring mass murder and violence — is a genuinely well put together set-piece given the circumstances/budget…


To think that this was the same movie which featured Edwards and love interest Mare Winningham “freeing” a bunch of restaurant lobsters just an hour earlier…


It’s the kind of movie that could only have been made in the 80s and I appreciate that.

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Miracle Mile is a 1988 American apocalyptic thriller drama film written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt and starring Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. The film depicts the panic surrounding a supposed doomsday brought on by a sudden outbreak of war and its oncoming nuclear holocaust. The story takes place in a single day and mostly in real-time. It is titled after the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles where most of the events take place. It was released on September 11, 1988.