Its plot depicts the panic surrounding a supposed doomsday brought on by a sudden outbreak of war and its oncoming nuclear holocaust, taking place in a single day and mostly in real-time.

[2] Harry Washello and Julie Peters meet at the La Brea Tar Pits and immediately fall in love.

The phone rings again and Harry answers, hearing a frantic man named Chip urgently warning that nuclear war will break out in less than 70 minutes.

As the patrons scoff at his story, one of them, a businesswoman named Landa, places calls to politicians in Washington and finds that they are all suddenly heading for "the extreme Southern Hemisphere".

She verifies that the launch codes Chip mentioned are real and, convinced of the danger, immediately charters private jets out of Los Angeles International Airport to a compound in a region in Antarctica with no rainfall.

When the owner refuses to make any stops, Harry, unwilling to leave without Julie, arranges to meet the group at the airport and jumps from the truck.

When they reach the top of the Mutual Benefit building they find the pad empty, with only Landa's drunk co-worker on the roof.

As the helicopter sinks and the cabin fills with natural asphalt tar, Harry tries to comfort a hysterical Julie by saying someday their fossils will be found and they will probably be put in a museum, or that they might take a direct hit and be turned into diamonds.

Julie, accepting her fate, calms down and takes comfort in Harry's words, and the movie fades out as the tar fills the compartment.

Monty Smith in Q Magazine described it as an "euphonious mixture of gloomy melodic synthesizers and hypnotically insistent drum machines".

[9] CD1: The Complete Film Score CD2: The Soundtrack Album Miracle Mile received generally positive reviews among critics.

[11] In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote: "It seems [De Jarnatt]'s not committed to his story or his characters, but to the idea that he is saying something profound—which he isn't.

"[12] Stephen Holden, in The New York Times, wrote: "As Harry and Julie, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Winningham make an unusually refreshing pair.

"[13] In his review for the Boston Globe, Jay Carr called it: "... a messy film, but it's got energy, urgency, conviction and heat and you won't soon forget it.