Like many, I only found out fairly recently that Ben Affleck had directed another movie. That movie, Air, is about Nike’s attempts to sign a young baller named Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal in 1984. Unlike many, I have absolutely zero interest in basketball and even less interest in sneakers, and the only reason I knew even a little bit about this story is because it was impossible to avoid the hype around “Air Jordan” in the mid-80s to ‘90s, because he was quite iconic, both in sports and life.
It’s 1984, and Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, Nike’s primary basketball scout, trying to find the next best thing to help bolster Nike from being in last place in the sneaker race against Adidas and Converse. Vaccaro has his eye on an 18-year-old kid named Michael Jordan, but his boss, Phil Knight (Affleck) doesn’t think the board will approve the kind of money Vaccaro would need to make that happen. Other players in making this happen include Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser and the oddly elusive Chris Tucker in a role that I wish I jotted down, because they seem to be there just as sounding boards for Vaccaro.
Working from an absolutely fantastic screenplay by Alex Convery, this is very much Damon’s movie in which to shine, because Vaccaro is such a compelling and well-rounded character in how he approaches everything in life, including Jordan and his family.
The movie also finds a way to keep you invested in the story with the others Vaccaro interacts with, particularly Viola Davis as Michael’s overly-protective mother, who is concerned about the amount of money (and cars) being thrown her son’s way to get him to wear one company’s sneakers over another, but she also wants him to get his due. Equally entertaining are Sonny’s engagements with Chris Messina as Michael’s agent, David Falk, and then Matthew Maher ends up stealing many scenes as Peter Moore, the man commissioned with designing the “Air Jordan” sneaker.
Affleck clearly takes many liberties with the storytelling, even if it’s just the choice of songs. Sure, Run DMC’s “My Adidas” seems clever enough as a song to represent Nike’s competition, and the song even gets a mention before it’s played, but that song wasn’t released until 1986, and it even refers to Live Aid, which took place in 1985. Jordan was signed to Nike in late 1984.
It’s easy to overlook things like that, except that Air leans so heavily on its soundtrack of ‘80s tunes – thanks to ubermensch Brett Arnold for the tip that Affleck also used bits from the soundtracks of 1984 films Body Double and Firestarter – that it sometimes threatens to overpower all the fantastic performances. There are also odder choices like during one of Sonny’s more stirring speeches, we watch Jordan’s entire career flash before our eyes in a montage. It drives forward the film’s narrative, sure, but it just makes it seem like Vaccaro is this Nostradamus-like mastermind of this billion-dollar enterprise. (I noticed that the 83-year-old Vaccaro was a consultant on the movie, probably very much on the initial screenplay.)
It’s odd seeing this movie fairly close to Tetris, because in both cases, they seem to be substantiating that Gordon Gecko’s “Greed is good” adage may have been apt. In the case of Air especially, it feels like you’re supposed to be rooting for a massive corporation here, which seems kind of weird… even (or especially) coming from a movie funded by Amazon.
Air offers a fantastic screenplay and terrific performances to match across the board, there’s no question there. Yet there are far fewer stakes for this type of movie when you already know the outcome of the story. Thanks to Affleck, Air also ends up possibly being the whitest movie about basketball and sneakers ever made.
Rating: 7/10
Air will open in theaters nationwide, starting on Weds, April 5.