Reviewer Flickchart rating: 2,587/5,199
A Million Miles Away, Amazon’s latest launch, is the true story of how José Hernández (Michael Peña) went from migrant farm employee to NASA astronaut. Alejandra Márquez Abella’s movie follows Hernández from a younger boy to his voyage into house. Whereas the traditional biopic plot construction hardly ascends into the cinematic heavens, A Million Miles Away is a heartwarming success.
Abella highlights key childhood recollections, specializing in José’s life within the fields, his relationship together with his father (Julio Cedillo), and a supportive early trainer (Michelle Krusiec). A montage later and we see José graduate faculty and start his first skilled engineering job. As dictated in biopic regulation, José has a meet cute with a lady (Rosa Salazar), and we briefly pause our pursuit of the ultimate frontier for an endearing romantic interlude.
Abella’s directorial choices contain a number of montage sequences as she makes an attempt to seize an emotional resonance over dialogue-heavy plot machinations. Whereas the film is all the time comfy and secure, Peña and Salazar’s characters are simple to empathize with, and their smiles and tears all the time really feel actual. The digital camera work is elevated above typical straight-to-streaming household movies, Abella offers us a crisp movie with an imaginative visible life… apart from the insidious inclusion of a lens flare (could JJ Abrams be cursed endlessly).
A Million Miles Away lacks pressure and relational depth, because the movie is all the time impatient to maintain the narrative shifting ahead. Themes of the significance of household, a supportive group, and the way they will help a person create a robust sense of objective paired with quiet and fascinating lead performances weave collectively a successful family-movie-night effort about an inspiring journey into house.
