Miracle Mile
Watching "Miracle Mile" seems like fun, yet it's a deadly serious film overall. You can see the gloom in the writers' faces as this movie proceeds. "What if we interrupted a romcom with a message from the base of <PERSON>, and we'll make it an apocalyptic "After Hours?" Yes, the world will end by nuclear holocaust, and the people in the coffee restaurant on Miracle Mile road know this, including the male lover in that developing romcom.
Everybody panics, believing what he hears from a stranger's call to a public payphone. The news is confirmed by a government worker with a mobile phone. Coincidentally -- no, not for the screenwriters -- she's reading the Cliffnotes version of Gravity's Rainbow.
The fact that there might be a missile hanging in the air, over the entire plot, is about as far as the references to <PERSON>'s dense work goes. We really go into quirky "After Hours" mode for awhile, as the male lover, panicked, races around LA to get his new female lover to take her to the airport. Where they are going? Well, nobody really knows, for who can escape nuclear apocalypse?
The movie has some great design features, yet it tries to hard at this without thinking through its characters' action. I got tired of asking myself why these characters, believing the end of civilization will happen in just 50 minutes, do what they do. 829
The movie does go in real-time: there's about 70 minutes from the phonecall, and at the 70-minute mark the movie will end.
So why does the main character keep leaving her? Why do they keep pausing for dramatic effect? You've got me. This is after all a movie. It is for fun, though I didn't have fun by the end.
The movie makes an excuse: as the characters are running through LA at 4:30AM, they pass a sign that says "Avant-Garde." Like the <PERSON> reference, that's about all the avant-garde you will get here. Quirky and strange? Yes. Avant-garde? Not going to happen unless the nukes bring a new color palette to this film.
I would call this a sped-up "After Hours," which was as much about a lost man's spiritual quest. This one, omitting that though it didn't have to, is more focused on a panicked man's attempt to rescue a maiden from disaster. It could've veered in many wiser and complicated directions, too, and you might feel like I did that the third act is a major letdown.
There's much focus on the attempt to get out of LA in an organized way. Maybe that's the point: it's a Hotel California scenario where you can never leave even if that's your heart's desire. 829