A Million Miles Away review – charming space biopic tells an inspiring story

The Amazon drama, about migrant worker turned astronaut Jose Hernandez, is part rousing success story and part Nasa PR

A young boy, the son of migrant farmers from Mexico, watches the Apollo 11 moon landing on a rickety living room TV set, riveted. The same young boy, now a young man, applies to Nasa's astronaut selection program 11 times, year after year, without success. The young man, now middle-aged, finally makes it to the Kennedy Space Center, only to train several more years for even a shot at exiting Earth.

A Million Miles Away, the Amazon biopic of the astronaut Jose Hernandez, has all the ingredients of an inspiring, sanded-down success story: Hernandez, played capably by Michael Pena, went from itinerant student to barrier-breaking electrical engineer to the International Space Station, the first migrant farm worker to go to space. It hits the usual beats of space heroism - the ambition of a gravity-defying dream, the vaunted heroism of the space program, the sacrifices in the name of science and patriotism - with chapters delineated by ingredients to success" in life, first outlined by his father, in line with Hernandez's later career as a motivational speaker.