Miracles 1986

Somewhere in the jungle, a sick little girl is at the center of a tense, fragile world. The child’s father K’in and her mother Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez fret over her health as the tribe searches for a way to heal her. The village’s witchdoctor, Kayum [Adalberto Martínez], is unable to cure the illness and instead sinks into drink. In a drunken moment, Kayum utters an ominous incantation that seems to summon a violent storm, a meteor-like display of thunder and lightning. The bizarre weather seems to ripple beyond the jungle and into far-off New York, where Roger Briggs is finishing a delicate operation as power flickers around him.

Meanwhile in New York, Jean is at a party, savoring the freedom that comes after a painful divorce from a wealthy, hard-working husband. A botched robbery spirals out of control when one robber is left stranded and, in his frantic escape from the police, he crashes Jean’s car into a window shop and leaves Roger’s car barely functional. Jean, determined not to be stranded, climbs into Roger’s car, a vehicle that already carries emotional baggage for its owner. The robber, Juan, pulls a gun and abducts them, locking them away in a closet and dragging them to his home.

Jean and Roger work together to break free, trading barbs and slings of sarcasm as they claw their way out of the closet and into a chaotic maze of rooms where Juan’s relatives argue and fight. A hidden police officer interrupts their attempt to escape, and a fierce confrontation erupts when the police raid closes in. The ensuing shootout sends the criminals scrambling; Juan escapes again, seizing Jean and Roger for a second time and forcing Roger to drive once more. Wildly, the chase continues as police fire at will, and there’s a tense moment when Jean nearly tries to jump free, only to be restrained by Roger.

In the midst of this pursuit, a prostitute Barbara Whinnery exits a scene of her own, her high heel getting stuck on the pavement as police cars flood the streets. The crash of a police car into a bank follows, sending two bank robbers—one of them a violent pair described by the film and their actions to be caught in the act—into the spotlight. The unexpected turn of events spills money from the bank’s machine onto a sleeping tramp, momentarily transforming a quiet civilian into a fortune-marked by luck.

Above the chaos, a pilot named Harry [Christopher Lloyd] appears, preparing a plane for takeoff the next day. When the police arrive in force, Harry must quickly help Juan, Jean, and Roger board the aging craft. Juan is wounded, and Roger tends to him as the trio clambers aboard. The plane’s old, failing machinery becomes a thread running through the sequence: a desperate bid to escape, with Juan and Harry leaping from the craft with parachutes as the aircraft shudders toward the ground. Harry’s bravado mirrors his rift with the law, as he jokes about how a man and a woman dressed up like them must have kidnapped him, a line that will echo with the Mexican police later.

Roger tries to fly the plane, and the group’s uneasy alliance dissolves into a more intimate, improvised partnership. He and Jean begin to reconcile as they bumble their way toward safety, exchanging laughter about their own failed marriage. The engines fail, and the craft climbs toward a precarious path that skirts a mountain. A rock slides away, triggering a landslide that wipes out a Mexican criminal trying to assault a young wife. The juxtaposition of danger and tenderness continues as the couple presses on, clinging to each other and to a sliver of hope.

When the plane finally lands, they stumble into the arms of Gomez and his fellow Mexican police officers, who struggle to understand how the two Americans survived their trials. Brought to a local prison, Jean and Roger plead their case to a judge Jorge Russek, arguing that the American embassy should step in. Jean, a lawyer by training, explains the whole story to the authorities, and the judge confirms that the embassy has already been contacted. In this moment, the duo realizes their fates are bound to a broader rescue plan.

Meanwhile, Juan and Harry hatch a new plan to break Jean and Roger out of prison by blowing a wall with dynamite. The two escapees are loaded onto a derelict boat, while the police race to catch them. The pair’s escape ends in disaster for the authorities as the boat drifts into a stormy sea. Jean and Roger wake up drenched and exhausted, and they share a renewed, tentative kiss that hints at forgiveness and possibly more.

The couple eventually lands on a remote shore and are found by seafaring locals. Jean is cared for by a missionary, while Roger’s surgical bag attracts the attention of a local community eager to see the little girl saved. Back in the jungle, Roger makes his way to the sick child, where the witchdoctor’s sobriety has yet to return. The tribe releases Kayum so Roger can tend to the child’s needs, recognizing that surgery and medicine must travel far beyond the village’s borders. With the little girl stabilized, the tribe transports her to a nearby mission post by hand-made hammock, while the missionary—present to allay a previous claim that the rescue was a miracle—observes the operation from a distance.

A helicopter arrives to take the girl to a real hospital, and a translator at the hospital relays the hopeful news to the girl’s family: she will be all right. Roger, left behind, must confront the possibility of losing Jean again as he narrates his plan to the embassy, insisting that if he survived their ordeal, so might she. In parallel, the criminals’ scheme to rob a bank culminates in a chaotic explosion, and the resulting pandemonium sends Roger and Jean’s cars colliding once more. But this time the collision is a moment of renewed affection, and they kiss amid the wreckage, glancing toward a future that promises another chance at happiness.

Weeks or days later, in a final act of faith and reconciliation, Jean and Roger seal their bond with a renewed marriage, a quiet affirmation after a whirlwind of danger, courage, and surprising luck. The storm that began in the jungle, a storm that touched both continents and many fates, has woven their lives together in a way neither could have predicted, leaving them with a shared memory of survival, forgiveness, and a love that endured through extraordinary odds.