About

A meet-cute at a museum. A promise of a date. A failed alarm clock and a frenzied dash to the meet-up point. The opening scenes of Miracle Mile play out like any other 1980s romantic comedy. It is not until the protagonist, musician Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards), picks up a ringing payphone that things fall apart. The military man on the other end of the line has called the wrong number in a panic and reveals that nuclear war is imminent.

And so begins Harry's frantic race against time to find the woman he fell for that afternoon and escape the West Coast of America. Outside of Takeshi Miike's Audition 1999, perhaps no other piece of cinema wrenches a seemingly earnest tale of romance down such a twisted path.

One of only two films directed by Steve De Jarnatt, Miracle Mile has a strikingly unusual tone – blackly comic, unbearably tense, yet still a humane character drama. It is the story of two people consumed by a global catastrophe; the personal amidst the apocalyptic. Buoyed by a synth-heavy Tangerine Dream soundtrack, it is a singular filmmaking vision.

M | Frequent coarse language, Occasional violence