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The Fall Guy

After a stunt gone wrong, professional stuntman Colt Seavers loses his confidence, his girl, and his way. But when the love of his life needs him on the set of her big directorial break, Colt comes out of his early retirement. Little does he know that being blown up and set on fire will be the least of his problems. He’ll need all of his stuntman training if he hopes to save the day and get the girl.

The Fall Guy Review

Held together almost entirely by a cast that is far, far better than the material, The Fall Guy is a bit of a mess and a huge missed opportunity.

Barely watchable only thanks to Ryan Gosling’s defibrillator-like charisma shocking the story’s corpse back to life between bad jokes and poorly developed everything else, The Fall Guy seemingly goes out of its way to arrest its own momentum scene after scene.

Likewise, Emily Blunt is a fine actress who gives it her absolute best, delivering a sincere and nuanced performance and doing better than most anyone else could with the viscous crud of lazy dialogue penned by writer Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3). Still, even her formidable talent can’t make up for the film’s fundamental flaws.

The Fall Guy fails hardest in its tone. It never fully commits to being slapstick, parody, serious, etc., and so ends up not being any of them. The premise of a fearless can-do man’s man who puts his years of stunt training to work against opponents who’ve never been pitted against someone willing to throw himself through plated glass and fall ten stories to make a point, a man who can fight and drive, and blow $h!t up and do it all with a smile and a wink has everything it needs to be fun and exciting. Unfortunately, The Fall Guy seems almost ashamed to be what it is.

Its main story is that of a will-they-won’t-they romance played with too much sincerity for a movie with such an over-the-top premise. The romance angle could have worked but as a secondary or even tertiary plot. Instead, every time an adventurous scene is about to get interesting, the momentum is crash test dummied into a narrative brick wall as Emily Blunt calls Colt with a thinly veiled relationship metaphor that goes on forever or sings karaoke that goes on forever or does something else that goes on forever.

On those few occasions when the action isn’t brought to a complete and awkward halt by childish relationship silliness, it’s done so with an unnecessary and unfunny joke, almost as if director David Leitch (Bullet Train, Deadpool 2) is apologizing to the audience that The Fall Guy is an action film.

Coincidentally, copious quantities of irony also help to grind any emotional throughline to dust. Much like how each of the four leads in 2016’s Lady Ghostbusters was the slapstick “comic relief,” most of The Fall Guy’s cast take turns competing to see who can be the most Paul Rudd. Has the tension or excitement built? Has Ryan Gosling just been a super cool bad@$$? Welp, that means it’s time for him to knock himself down a peg with some “awe shucks” comedic self-referential irony or by treating the situation with overdeveloped meta-casualness.

When the pyrotechnics settle, and the rolling stunt cars come to a stop, The Fall Guy has the right ingredients with the wrong formula.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Not Much

• Ok, there are a couple of moments in which a small woman is far more physically dangerous than they would be in real life, but it honestly comes across more as poor filmmaking than a desire by the filmmakers to make a girl boss.
  • The one or two scenes are brief and can mostly be explained away by force multipliers or a cumbersome costume.
• The phrase toxic masculinity is uttered once, but the person using it is a vapid, self-absorbed narcissist who isn’t supposed to be taken seriously.

The One Thing

• Emily Blunt and some random bit player are the only two characters in the film who aren’t on the spectrum between slightly or narratively conveniently dumb to borderline vegetable. They aren’t superwomen by any means, but I suppose they are noteworthy in that they are the only ones.

The Reluctant Man’s Man

• Gosling’s Colt Seavers is a capable man of action… who isn’t the brightest, cries to chick songs, and never initiates anything. Even when he takes charge, it’s only with permission from one of the female characters. He’s a puppy dog with teeth instead of a rottweiler with manners.
  • It’s barely noticeable because Ryan Gosling is so charismatic, and Emily Blunt seems so incredibly pleasant.

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Fallout (season 1)

Two hundred years after a nuclear war that ravaged the planet, a young woman who has lived a sheltered life of relative ease beneath the ground in a special Vault must brave the alien dangers of the post-apocalyptic surface if she hopes to rescue her kidnapped father from mysterious raiders.

Review

DISCLAIMER: I’ve never played a minute of the games. This review is based solely on the series.

Season one of Fallout on Amazon Prime is a rip-roaring good time. It’s overflowing with well-thought-out and interesting characters with believable and relatable motivations who experience nuanced character growth that belies the trappings of its over-the-top post-apocalyptic Atompunk aesthetic. For every giant salamander monster, there is a jaded loaner bent on revenge.

The world of  Fallout is one of the best examples of world-building since the first three seasons of Game of Thrones. The showrunners’ attention to detail and their masterful intertwining of people, places, and things gives the viewer a fully immersive experience in which to get lost and helps to make the otherwise unbelievable scenarios and characters feel like a completely integrated universe of which the viewer is only getting the smallest of glimpses.

While the series is overflowing with characters ranging from interesting to excellent, two stand out as both the best in the series and two of the best characters on TV right now.  Ella Purnell’s Lucy MacLean is chipper and well-meaning at heart. Yet, when she is tasked with an impossible mission for which she is grossly unprepared and begins to experience the horrors of the Wasteland, a journey that would break lesser women, she rallies and soldiers on. She never loses the core of her identity.

It’s through Lucy’s fish-out-of-water eyes and 1950s America can-do spirit that the nightmarish reality of the show is filtered, and it’s this spark that makes it survivable for both her character and the audience. She’s spunky. She’s fun. Best of all, despite the fantastic circumstances, she’s a relatively grounded character who only bests those who would stop her with sunshine grit, a lot of luck, and knowing the value of humility.

However, as needed as Lucy’s optimism might be for the show, there is no show without Walton Goggins’ Cooper Howard/aka The Ghoul. Goggins is a character actor many will recognize from his over 30 years in the business. However, for all of his time spent on camera, his is a name that most don’t know. If there is any justice in the world, Fallout will be his breakout.

Goggins infuses his ducentigenarian (had to look that one up) nuclear-zombie (atombie?) bounty hunter with all of the cool stereotypical stoic badassery that anyone who knows the difference between High Plains Drifter and A Fistful of Dollars could want, but he doesn’t stop there. Aided by an excellently conceived and executed backstory strategically scattered throughout the season, his character is given a pathos that resonates with every red-blooded man in the audience. It’s not that it’s never been done before; it’s that it hasn’t been done well in a long time.

Concurrently, Fallout’s story isn’t wholly original, but it’s done with enough original style and peppered with sufficiently charismatic characters with sympathetic arcs to overlook just about any wart, including the complete failure of the “twist” ending and ultimate villains’ unbelievably stupid plan.

If you can handle the following Woke Elements, season 1 of Fallout is totally Worth it.

WOKE ELEMENTS

The Good

• In any other show of this type, run by anyone else, Lucy MacLean would be an unstoppable girl boss taking down three-ton mutants with nothing but spit and a bad attitude while putting down her beta cuck bestie. But not in Fallout. Instead, despite the fact that the show establishes in its opening montage that she’s been in fight training for the entirety of her life, she realistically gets her butt handed to her in nearly every confrontation. She only manages to come out on top thanks to a mixture of luck and situational awareness.

The Non-Binary Elephant In The Room

• This is the big one. There is a mentally ill character that appears briefly in one episode and a little more in a second, played by a mentally ill woman, both of whom believe that she’s a make-believe gender. As bad as that is, the show also goes out of its way to manufacture a scene that provides the opportunity to refer to this series’ original character as “they.”
  • The show doesn’t preach or get sanctimonious about gender ideology, and this is the only instance of it in the show. Still, in a post-apocalyptic world in which only the strongest and cruelest survive, and even then only barely, one of the most unbelievable things is the inclusion of a spindly armed trash-stache-having mental case sharing a barracks with a bunch of testosterone-filled alpha zealot soldiers who beat the crap out of one another to pass the time, yet accept her as one of the boys.
  • Her character could have literally been anyone or just as easily completely omitted.

Just Enough Gay For Parties

• The showrunners managed to squeeze two lesbians dancing in the background during a wedding.

Objectification Is Bad… Unless it’s of men

• Two or three too many gratuitous naked dude butt scenes. Who do they think the audience for this is?

Capitalism Done It

• There’s no way to discuss this one without spoiling some things. You’ve been warned.
  • ***SPOILERS*** Money-hungry capitalists blew up 99% of the world’s population and irradiated the soil and water… to make money. Someone slept through their Economics 101 course. While scarcity of desired goods increases their value, scarcity of potential customers does not.
  • Literal communists are the good guys. ***END SPOILERS***

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Road House (2024)

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a retired UFC fighter who now lives a nomadic life, wandering from one underground fight to another while scratching a living off of his sordid reputation. When he’s hired to provide security at a Florida Keys Road House, he has no idea that he’ll have to do more than break up bar fights if he hopes to survive the month.

Road House (2024) firmly belongs as a VOD rather than a theatrical release. Its uneven pacing and underdeveloped characters combined with its cartoon plot aren’t worth the price of admission. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s all bad or not worth the watch.

Jake Gyllenhaal absolutely brings it. His Dalton is cool under pressure, slow to anger, and utterly convincing as a nigh unstoppable bad@$$. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton doesn’t read Legend of The Falls. He certainly doesn’t have a degree from NYU’s philosophy department, and Tai Chi and fruity spinning back kicks have been replaced with rage-filled haymakers and a WWE/UFC hybrid that looks friggin’ great on screen, especially when combined with Gyllenhaal’s commitment and Conor McGregor’s expertise.

For the most part, Road House (2024)’s camera work is fairly utilitarian, but like every other part of the film, it goes next level in the fight scenes. Road House (2024) boasts some of the best fight cinematography in the last ten years and certainly this year’s top three best fight choreography.

With the exception of Gyllenhaal and McGregor, virtually every other character is forgettable and generic. However, McGregor might have himself a new career as this generation’s Vin Jones. He’s not a terrific actor by any means, but he can obviously sell the fights, and he’s good enough and intimidating enough to be the mostly silent baddie in a Guy Ritchie flick.

The film’s pacing isn’t always consistent, with too much screen time given to unimportant events and far too little given to establishing the bad guys and giving the audience a reason to care or someone to root against. This renders the finale a little underwhelming.

That said, this Road House’s weakest point is its lack of identity. The 1989 Road House was a raunchy campfest. However, 2024’s is far more sanitized. No patrons are offering anything special for $20 or being used as a “regular Saturday night thing,” and zero throats get ripped out. By straddling the line between the original’s camp and today’s cinematic sensibilities, it sacrifices distinctiveness and relegates itself to a fun but forgettable watch.

If there’s one takeaway from Road House (2024), it’s that Jake Gyllenhaal needs to do more action flicks right now before he ages out.

WOKE ELEMENTS

DEI

• You can almost feel the studio calculus in the film. “What is the correct percentage of diversity that will offend the least number of people? What characters can be ‘diverse’?”
  • The film is set in the fictional town of Glass Key, FL. However, the real Florida Keys has a black population of 3.3%. It’s rather coincidental that the only two business owners (one of which is the gal who owns the Road House) we are introduced to happen to be black. So, it’s there but it’s not made into a big deal, and even I have to admit that this is a real nitpick.
  • While the henchmen are “diverse,” the two main baddies are blond-haired white guys. Of course, the main good guy is a white guy, so I guess the studio’s calculus figured that balanced things out.

Free At Last, Free At Last

• The film only has a single eye-rolling moment of wokeness artificially shoehorned in.
  • Out of the blue and never mentioned again, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement are briefly and inexpertly fumbled into a completely unneeded, unwarranted, and unwanted bit o’ dialogue.

Ain’t No Eves Around These Parts

• The few female characters have little to do in this Road House, but those with speaking roles are all flawless, even the bartender.
  • I can’t emphasize how little they have to do with the film or how little screen time they get. I promise that you wouldn’t have even noticed ten years ago.

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Tenet

A super spy, played by John David Washington, is recruited into a world of danger and intrigue on a temporal scale. Working almost entirely in the dark, he will have to fight his way to the top of a criminal organization wrapped in mystery. The price of his failure? All of existence.

Originally released 6 months into the COVID scare in the hopes of bringing people back to the cinema, many criticisms have been laid at the feet of Tenet. Chief among them is that it doesn’t make any sense, which isn’t helped by director Christopher Nolan’s recent admission that Tenet isn’t supposed to make sense. In the interview, Nolan says that he wants viewers to “experience” his films and that they aren’t puzzles to be solved.

This is all well and good. Ambiguity can be an effective narrative tool. Just look at another of Nolan’s films, Inception. More than 13 years after its release, people are still arguing over its ending. However, for all that Tenet gets right, which is gone into some detail below, it misses a key ingredient that helped to make Inception’s spinning top thought-provoking instead of frustrating. That is a visceral connection to the characters and action. In Tenet, you root for the protagonist because you’re supposed to. In Inception, the audience roots for DiCapprio’s Cobb because they want to.

So, what does Tenet get right? As per the norm, Christopher Nolan surrounds himself with the best people. His visual crew, including the cinematographer and production designer, consists of familiar names from his past films, and the actors whom he cast are always perfect for their roles.

John David Washington exudes an immediate presence and swagger as well as a sincerity as The Protagonist that helps to carry his character through some of the film’s more unfortunate and repetitive exposition dumps. One day, he will find the right role for him that will be a worthy showcase of his talent (on a side note, I’d love to see a buddy action film starring him and Henry Cavill. Both are charming and charismatic actors who do action right but have never really found their place in Hollywood – The Witcher mess not withstanding.).

The supporting cast is also strong, with Robert Pattinson showing once again that he’s more than just a sparkling vampire for whom tween girls salivate. Unfortunately, the audience is never given much of a reason to care about his character. Oh, sure, at the film’s conclusion, there’s a bit of a twist revealed that, if explored earlier, had the potential to engender empathy for the two men. However, it’s far too little, far too late.

After the debacle that was the Star Wars prequels, it was revealed that George Lucas believed that audiences “didn’t care” about the story; they only wanted mind-blowing visuals. While Nolan certainly doesn’t seem to ascribe to the same filmmaking philosophy, Tenet suffers from exactly this, nonetheless. The interpersonal relationships are sacrificed on the altar of thoughtfully intricate and thought-provoking story mechanics.

In the second act, a character is introduced whose primary purpose is to provide the audience with some human connection and a reason to care about the impending apocalypse. Regrettably, both her character and the B-plot surrounding her feel tacked on and artificial. Were the main protagonists compelling enough to cultivate that needed connection on their own, the stakes would have been sufficient to engage the audience on a deeper level, and the film would have provided a much richer experience.

Sadly, while character development might be Tenet’s greatest weakness, it’s not its only weakness. Even though Nolan claims that audiences aren’t supposed to understand the film completely, Tenet is no stranger to dialogue-heavy scenes that spend 70% of the film trying to (sometimes clunkily) explain what’s going on. Nolan is usually a master at pacing; however, Tenet is plagued by an abundance of these heavy exposition dumps that completely arrest the film’s momentum.

Tenet’s Visuals

Tenet is a quintessential Nolan visual experience that, despite its deceptively mundane plot and significant narrative deficiencies, is an underrated technical achievement. The thought and care that must have gone into coordinating the film’s effects while maintaining continuity can’t be overemphasized. The storyboarding likely sent at least one artist to the insane asylum.

For this reason, and the fact that your only other choices are the indecipherable Bob Marley: One Love and the cinematic roadkill that is Drive-Away Dolls, we’re unofficially recommending Tenet as Worth it for this weekend’s limited re-release, but only under the condition that you see it in IMAX.

WOKE ELEMENTS

I Don’t Need No Man

• One of the tertiary characters is secretly in charge of her organization and uses her husband as a front. Fine, obviously, women can be capable bosses. What’s woke about this is that the filmmakers actively make her subterfuge about misogyny.
  • She dismissively tells her husband, “Sanje, make a drink for our guest, please.” It’s done in such a way that were the roles reversed, feminists would be crying foul.
  • In the very next scene, she tells Washington’s character, “A masculine front in a man’s world has its uses.”

How Dare You

• It’s one line that is saved for the end of the film, but the entire movie exists because ***SPOILER ALERT*** Global Warming ruined the future. ***END SPOILER***

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Gen V (S1: E1 – 3)

Set in the same universe as the Amazon series The Boys, Gen V follows a handful of students at Godlkin University, a Vought International-sponsored school for Supers, as they navigate the usual pressures of university life as well as the horrifying and dark truth hidden beneath the university’s hallowed walls and in the shadows of the administration’s black heart.

Derivative by nature, only a relatively few spin-off series have been able to find success to rival their progenitors. Most that have can almost exclusively credit their success to the charisma of their leads and the quality of their writers. For while spin-offs might launch with larger audiences than original programs, fans often quickly grow tired of recycled plotlines and weaker character dynamics than that of their beloved original.

Gen V benefits greatly from existing in such a well-built world because its characters are fine but forgettable, its soap opera teenage drama is tedious, and its primary plot has already been done better by Billy Butcher and crew. Whereas the plot for each season of The Boys is tight and well thought out, Gen V exists on a campus built from convenience.

Godlkin University is purportedly THE number-one institution for turning out high-profile Supers and is very selective about its admissions. Yet, according to the show’s narrative, both the show’s star and her roommate have powers that necessarily preclude them from ever being top-tier or accepted by middle America… unless that is, the completely unpredictable set of events, the catalyst of which is utterly ridiculous, that just so happen to MacGuffin their way to fruition occurs.

A further frustration with superhero programs in general and Gen V specifically is what’s become the trope of superpowered people not being curious enough to explore the full extent of their powers. Maria Moreau, adequately played by Jaz Sinclair, has the ability to control blood telekineticly. In the sequence in which she first discovers her powers, she is shown to be able to make it virtually explode into razor-sharp shrapnel.

However, when grown, she chooses to slice open her hands with a knife and shoot blood from her body as projectile weapons. If she can manipulate blood into razor-sharp projectiles, why does she need a knife to cut open her hands? Why not save crucial time by slicing them open from the inside with her blood? How is it that she doesn’t get woozy from the exertion? Why not use the bad guy’s blood against himself? How is it possible, especially considering the way in which she discovered her powers, ***SPOILER that she doesn’t discover that she can put blood back inside of someone until she’s 18? END SPOILER***

Then there’s the problem with the show’s plot. It’s a bit SPOILERISH, so continue reading at your own risk. For an unknown reason, the school’s basement (not a sub-basement, just a regular old basement-level basement) houses a secret facility, a prison for young Supers who are being punished or have exhibited adverse side effects from Compound V.

The only reason that such an easily detectable facility can possibly be justified as existing under the feet of hundreds or thousands of super-powered young adults, many of whom (at least as freshmen) are at the university to become crime-solving heroes, is so that it can be discovered for plot purposes. Episode 3 even makes a special point to let the audience know that all Supers have far more acute hearing than regular people. There are literally people screaming in agony a few feet below them on a daily basis. It’s stupid and lazy writing.

That said, Gen V gets a lot of things right. It’s well-paced and decently acted, and just like in The Boys, Gen V nails Vought. Clearly a meta-commentary on the glut of DEI and identity politics in film and TV, Gen V satirizes companies like Disney by making Vought’s every motivation that of a soulless mega-corporate entity churning out what they believe to be culturally palatable-high profile low-value products.

With stakes that are hard to care about, characters that aren’t as interesting as that of the parent series, and a contrived and underwhelming plot, it’s hard to say if its well-placed Easter eggs and the novelties of gross-out gore and supes behaving badly will be enough to carry this series to future seasons.

WOKE ELEMENTS

These three episodes were really challenging in this regard. On the one hand, the casting is as artificially diverse as one can be. Buuuuuuuttttttt, the show makes a point of letting the audience know that the evil Vought corporation consciously uses identity politics to pander to useful idiots. That said…

• A ridiculous number of people are arbitrarily and irrelevantly bi-sexual.
• Woke sexual behavior is unsanitarily dripping off every episode’s proverbial walls.
• Of course, a douchebag guy is white with a small penis.
• There’s an over-the-top (even for a spin-off of a markedly over-the-top show) amount of penis abuse. One jerk character (you guessed it, a white guy) is mind-controlled into repeatedly smashing his junk with a baseball bat, while another douche (yup, a white guy) – loves having his handled roughly.
• There is a main secondary character whose primary superpower is being literally non-binary. I kid you not; they (I hope you appreciate how much I hate typing that) is at they’s most invulnerable mid-transformation from male to female and visa versa.
  • While, at first, I believed this to be another instance of meta-commentary, in Episode 3, there is a long and painfully stupid sequence in which they preach to a surrogate audience via Asian stereotypes.

On a positive note, as I write this, I’m glad to learn that, for the time being, Grammarly finds the incorrect usage of pronouns as confounding as I do.

Gen V (S1: E4)

In episode 4 of Gen V, the gang, aware of at least some of the evil goings-on at God U, continues investigating what went wrong with Golden Boy. Will they be able to hide the truth of their knowledge from the superpowered investigator who’s been sent to “help?”

Now that the somewhat twisty setup and character introductions are out of the way, Episode 4 finds a little footing and provides a sense of direction. It is also significantly benefitted by the addition of the series’ first villain worthy of attention… right up until he’s neutralized.

So far, the show’s most problematic and overarching issue is its main characters. Whereas the cast of The Boys is full of well-defined characters, each with distinct personalities and motivations, Gen V’s crew is diverse-looking but is otherwise mostly homogenous and shallow. Differentiating character traits range from liking to get stoned to being unenthusiastic about one’s powers.

Unfortunately, this episode makes a massive misstep that emotionally neuters what had been a rather enjoyably tense narrative thread with loads of promise and potential. Early on, we are introduced to Tek Knight. Mentioned multiple times in The Boys series, Tek is a superpowered Sherlock Holmes and host of a reality detective show. Played to pompous perfection by Robert Vernon, Tek is as relentless in his pursuit of the truth as he is in his desire to use that truth to manipulate and ruin people for the sake of ratings.

What’s unfortunate is that Vernon breathes such deliciously insufferable life into Tek, only to have him rendered completely (metaphorically) powerless in the name of a joke that isn’t even funny. His abilities, in combination with a magnetic performance, made for the show’s first meaningfully grounded conflict and could have made for a wonderfully tense and compelling remainder of the season.

Were we to rank shows from 1 to 10 (1 being a melodramatic soap opera and 10 being the most engaging of dramas), we’d give Gen V a 4 so far. That’s not to say that it’s not entertaining, but neither is it something you must see.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• One or more of the writers had to have had a very “friendly” uncle as a child because the amount of hate for male genitalia is obsessive and overt.
  • This episode opens with a would-be rapist (you guessed it, a white guy) having his ***SPOILER*** schwanson exploded ***END SPOILER***.
  • ***SPOILER*** The main villain is frighteningly competent. So, it only stands to reason that the very diverse and normal human dean is able to best him by easily and out of nowhere, discovering that he’s a pervert who likes to screw inanimate holes. ***END SPOILER***
• While I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt early on, it’s clear that diversity for the sake of diversity is not a meta-commentary but a purview.
• Every white guy is evil, crazy, or dead.
• Every good guy who is a POC is also bisexual.
• There’s some forced LGBTness.

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A Million Miles Away

Born the son of migrant farmers in 1962 and not even learning English until the age of 12, A Million Miles Away tells the real-life story of José Hernández. Overcoming extreme poverty with hard work and dedication, as well as a devoted and self-sacrificing family, in 2009, Hernández achieved his lifelong goal and left Earth’s confines as a NASA astronaut.

A Million Miles Away is a familiar tale of perseverance and overcoming the odds to achieve one’s dreams. However, with a special mix of excellent and sometimes even inspired direction by Alejandra Márquez Abella and heartfelt performances by its cast, A Million Miles Away transcends what could have easily been a Hallmark schlock-fest. Instead, we are treated to a lovely tale that will fill you with the warm and fuzzies.

In a film without a single weak performance, the most surprising one is given by Michael Peña (Ant-Man) whose portrayal of Hernández is subtle and often touching. Aided by virtue of it being a real-life underdog story, his charisma and vulnerability are key to the film’s elevation from the mundane, making it impossible not to root for him. In one particularly stirring scene, Peña’s Hernández teeters on the edge of emasculation as he barely manages to hold on to his dignity while silently willing his wife to forgive and respect him.

It’s a common enough feeling for any man who has had to ask their family to make sacrifices so that he might gamble at success. It’s a mixture of guilt at missing ball games and first steps combined with the nearly fevered obsession with your goal and the rock in your stomach need for your wife’s respect. Peña nails it.

If the movie falters anywhere, it’s in its glossing over the cost of the sacrifices made by Hernández’s family as well as the “why” of his dream’s importance. Were it not for the craftsmanship exhibited by all, it would be easy for viewers to see Hernández as selfish.

After all, he was already a successful engineer who provided well for his family. His becoming an astronaut wouldn’t lift them out of poverty or set to rights some previously made wrong. It seems only natural that he should have a compelling reason to justify missing years of his family’s life. However, the film only grazes against this, relying on our investment in the character to blind us to the bigger picture, and it works.

With grounded and universal themes, crisp pacing, and economic dialogue delivered by solid performers and an invested and thoughtful director, A Million Miles Away is a feel-good movie that delivers on its promise.

Role Models in A Million Miles Away

There are numerous positive role models throughout the film  The obvious one is José Hernández whose determination and hard work helped him to achieve his lifelong dream. However, the love, support, and sacrifice made by his wife and parents are key to his success, firmly making them his equals in this department.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Even though it could have been much worse, especially when you consider the real Hernández’s politics, there were a few obligatory moments of identity politics injected in.
  • There’s a brief conversation between Hernández and another minority astronaut in which she hits us with the, “do you know how important it is for people like us” to be represented routine. As though people of color are the only ones who have ever succeeded despite coming from nothing.
  • When listing the differences between himself and those who have been chosen for the space program, his wife mentions that most of them had been Caucasian. Well duh. Most of the applicants were Caucasian. And it’s not like Hernández was anywhere near the first minority in space. He wasn’t even one of the first 10 Latinos.

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