MIRACLE MILE
A film review by Than Nguyen
Copyright 1989 Than Nguyen
I liked MIRACLE MILE even though the concept of the movie isn't particularly original. The main character, Harry Washello, has just met the woman of his dreams while wandering through a museum at the LaBrea Tar Pits. He's a trumpet player, a self-professed Glen Miller wannabee, who looks sort of sweet and honest like John Boy from the Waltons. Julie's a waitress, an "old-fashioned girl" who lives with her grandmother; she also promises to "screw his eyeballs blue" on their first date. Fine. So they have the hots for each other. "Big deal!" you say.
Their hot date doesn't go as planned. Harry inadvertently answers a phone call meant for someone else. The caller is a young soldier stationed in a missile silo in North Dakota. He had meant to call his father to say goodbye. You see...The BOMB is coming.
Harry is stunned. He can't be sure if the phone call was real or if it was a prank. I couldn't tell either. Throughout the movie, I kept changing my mind as the situations became more frantic. "Oh s**t! it's real." "Sigh...it's not real.", etc. Now that I have had some time to mull over it, I'd say that the suspense is reminiscent of AFTER HOURS.
The movie did raise some questions. What if an ordinary person, someone I'd trust, tells me that the BOMBS are flying *now* and that I have 50 minutes 'til I'm vaporized. Would I be more likely to believe it if I heard it from a clean cut man in a suit as opposed to a disheveled homeless person? And if the BOMB really is coming, what should a responsible adult do? Will I regret not doing the things I really want to do but never had the time for?
MIRACLE MILE doesn't have the clinical horror of THE WAR GAME (the BBC production) or the goofiness of THE ATOMIC CAFE, but I did feel that I got my money's worth out of it and I would recommend it to my friends. Oh...and don't see it alone. I think you'd want to have a friend along to talk about the movie afterwards, over your favorite-dessert-which-you-have-been-avoiding.
Thuan Nguyen nguyen%cardio.ucsf.edu@ernie.berkeley.edu University of California, San Francisco Bioengineering Graduate Group
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