'A MILLION MILES AWAY' CHARMS AND INSPIRES WITH THE TALE OF AN UNLIKELY ASTRONAUT

If ever there was an inspirational story about reaching for the stars, it’s “A Million Miles,” the real-life journey of a how a boy who grew up as a migrant farmworker became a NASA astronaut.

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It starts in the corn fields of Michoacan, Mexico, as José Hernández looks up into the sky in wonder, and it ends two hours later with him 200 miles above the Earth in the International Space Station.

“Tell me something,” his cousin tells him. “Who better than a migrant? Somebody who knows what it’s like to dive into the unknown. Who better than that?”

Biopics with outsized heroes can lay it on thick, but “A Million Miles” manages to keep its hero’s feet firmly on earth before his space shot, largely thanks to star Michael Peña as Hernández and Rosa Salazar as his wife. They keep their characters’ humanity even as the soundtrack and visuals blast off. He may be an astronaut, but someone still needs to take out the trash.

Screenwriters Bettina Gilois, Hernán Jiménez and Alejandra Márquez Abella — who base their story on Hernández’s memoir — tell a linear story of a gifted young man who is helped along the way by a teacher, his parents and his extended family. He is rejected so many times from NASA that he keeps all their letters in a folder.