Mir­a­cle Mile is an apoc­a­lyp­tic thriller that’s more rel­e­vant than ever

Mir­a­cle Mile is cham­pi­oned by devot­ed fans, but has escaped being lumped in with oth­er sci-fi films from the 1980s. That unique­ness is what has made it a true cult film. It hinges on one of the most star­tling tonal switch­es ever cap­tured on screen. Char­lie Brook­er per­fect­ly summed it up by say­ing the film ​“starts out as a twee rom-com in which a nerdy musi­cian and a wait­ress meet and fall in love in down­town LA – until a wrong-num­ber call informs them that a nuclear war has bro­ken out, with Sovi­et mis­siles due to hit the city in 70 minutes.”

Direc­tor Steve De Jar­natt often jokes before ret­ro­spec­tive screen­ings of the film to that it’s a ​“nice John Hugh­es roman­tic com­e­dy,” and the film cer­tain­ly has that vibe – until sud­den­ly every­thing changes. This effect was inten­si­fied by the cast­ing of Antho­ny Edwards and Mare Win­ning­ham, who were both sta­ples of ​’80s teen films.

The cast is excel­lent, with Antho­ny Edwards in par­tic­u­lar nev­er bet­ter. Nico­las Cage came close to land­ing the role, and giv­en his per­for­mances in oth­er ​’80s films, you can see how he could’ve done it. How­ev­er, going with Edwards gave the film more ground­ing. Accord­ing to De Jar­natt, Cage want­ed to repli­cate his per­for­mance in Peg­gy Sue Got Mar­ried, which would have giv­en it quite a dif­fer­ent feel. There’s a strong sup­port­ing cast fea­tur­ing faces famil­iar from many ​’80s cult films, includ­ing Eddie Bunker, who shows up using a shot­gun (some­thing he already knew how to do, of course.) Win­ning­ham and Edwards had nat­ur­al chem­istry, and end­ed up becom­ing a real-life couple.

It was the sec­ond and last film to be direct­ed by De Jar­natt. After being attached to many devel­op­ment projects that nev­er panned out, he lat­er worked exclu­sive­ly in TV. In recent years, De Jar­natt has con­cen­trat­ed on writ­ing short fic­tion. His Hitch­cock influ­ence (De Jarnatt’s first pro­fes­sion­al direct­ing job was the pilot for the ​’80s revival of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents, and he did a sol­id remake of the icon­ic Man from the South) is easy to spot in Mir­a­cle Mile. Like most Hitch­cock films, it’s about an every­man faced with the unex­pect­ed; and the rad­i­cal shift in tone hear­kens back to Psy­cho, where the switch flipped when Janet Leigh gets a sur­prise in the shower.

It was a project from the heart for De Jar­natt, who after 10 years of plan­ning had just sev­en weeks to actu­al­ly shoot the high­ly ambi­tious film. It was com­plet­ed entire­ly at night, with lots of crazy track­ing shots. When Edwards’ char­ac­ter Har­ry is try­ing to cross over the traf­fic jam at the end, it’s one of the great­est scenes of crazed des­per­a­tion ever. The ten­sion is def­i­nite­ly helped by Tan­ger­ine Dream’s score, which was one of their best film music con­tri­bu­tions. Their Sor­cer­er score was often used as a temp score by ​’80s film­mak­ers, and De Jar­natt approached them after hear­ing it many times.

The film remains one of the most real­is­tic depic­tions of nuclear war and the chaos that would ensue, wrapped up in a Los Ange­les love sto­ry. And as the direc­tor always says after a ret­ro­spec­tive screen­ing, the threat is more preva­lent now than then.

Mir­a­cle Mile is released on spe­cial edi­tion Blu-ray on 16 Octo­ber cour­tesy of Arrow Films.