Certificate: 15 (strong language). Running Time: 112 mins. UK Distributor: Warner Bros.
WHO’S IN IT?
Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, Viola Davis, Matthew Maher, Tom Papa, Julius Tennon, Joel Gretsch, Gustaf Skarsgård, Barbara Sukowa, Jessica Green, Dan Bucatinsky, Damian Delano Young
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Ben Affleck (director, producer), Alex Convery (writer), Madison Ainley, Jason Michael Berman, Matt Damon, David Ellison, Peter Guber, Jordan Moldo, Jeff Robinov, Jesse Sisgold and Jon Weinbach (producers), Robert Richardson (cinematographer), William Goldenberg (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Nike salesman Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) takes a huge risk with up-and-coming basketball athlete Michael Jordan…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON AIR?
Even those who know absolutely nothing about basketball will most likely know who Michael Jordan is. Considered the greatest basketball player of all time, and indeed one of the greatest sports figures, the retired Chicago Bulls star has gained cultural icon status, thanks in part to his exclusive brand of Nike footwear known the world over as Air Jordans.
Curiously, it is the shoe, and not the man himself, that director/co-star Ben Affleck – with his first directorial outing in over six years – and writer Alex Convery give the biopic treatment in Air, with Jordan all but cast to the side (he is always shot from behind or over the shoulder, with almost no dialogue). It is certainly a gutsy choice to make a film that’s technically about Michael Jordan to not really feature Michael Jordan in any real capacity, but Affleck and Convery manage to find some intriguing and crowd-pleasing ways to make their film soar without the NBA superstar to worry about.
Set in 1984, we follow Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) who is finding it difficult to liven the company’s basketball division, which is far behind its fiercest competitors Adidas and Converse. Soon, Vaccaro approaches Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) with a risky proposition: instead of hiring the standard three players with their $250k marketing budget, they put it all into one rookie by the name of Michael Jordan (represented by stand-in Damian Delano Young) and design a new show line around just him. The result is, of course, the Air Jordans we all know and love today, but for Vaccaro it’s only half of the job, as he then has to convince Jordan – or, more specifically, his mother Deloris (Viola Davis) – to sign the business deal with Nike and change the nature of sports branding forever.
Air joins the exclusive “sports-movies-that-aren’t-about-sports” club (other members include Jerry Maguire and Moneyball), with the only time we ever set foot on a basketball court is during an opening scouting sequence, and even then, the sport is never shown being played. Instead, the film’s court is the Oregon headquarters of Nike, its star players are doughy white businessmen, and the ultimate slam-dunk moment comes in the form of an emotionally charged monologue delivered by Matt Damon.
As uninteresting as that perhaps sounds on paper, Affleck’s charged direction and Convery’s sharp screenplay delivers thrills and cheer-worthy moments that often resemble what it must be like to be at an actual basketball game. When Damon is swapping wits with Jason Bateman and Chris Tucker (as fellow Nike executives) or humorously taunting Jordan’s volatile agent David Falk (Chris Messina), you can feel the energy rushing through as they each try and one-up each other, as though they’re rival teammates passing and chucking the ball every which way across one another. Later on, when things are much calmer – in a time-out, if you will – which allow for more tender scenes with actors like Bateman and especially the ever-magnetic Viola Davis, that same unbreakable spirit courses through the body and makes you just want to cheer for the heroes all the more.
Affleck, it has to be said, is a big part of making that possible. The director is channelling the same air-punching sensibility that previously earned him acclaim for Argo, but with Air his ambitions are much more grounded in both scope and subject matter, which makes the underdog storytelling stand out a great deal more. This is because, when you really break it down to its core components, Air is a very light film; there are few dramatic twists, even fewer identifiable villains (Messina’s Falk perhaps comes closest to antagonistic levels, but even he is someone that’s just doing their job), and it’s a story that we all know what ends up happening.
However, none of that prevents Affleck from infusing his film with an underlying jolt of electricity that makes these characters seem like formidable players and makes even stuffy boardrooms feel like action-packed basketball courts. The director has, quite cleverly, crafted a basketball game without any actual basketball; the energy that one would get from watching a game in action is all here, but it’s all from seeing this invigorating and even inspirational story unfold in as awesomely unshowy fashion as possible. It is a fascinating achievement for Affleck behind the camera, and in front of it he’s also having fun playing into Nike CEO Phil Knight’s laid-back eccentricities, in a supporting role that also doesn’t take the spotlight away from other members of the ensemble.
The film is sharp, funny, smart, and at times emotional, thanks also to Convery’s script as well as some sparky editing by William Goldenberg, both of which lean heavily into the 80s culture that blankets this story (though at times there can be such a thing as too much 80s, with its constant soundtrack of decade-friendly hits and shot after shot of archaic items like Mr. T Cereal in corner shops).
All of that, incidentally, without the one key ingredient in this Michael Jordan origin story: Michael Jordan. Yes, the decision to only show him from the back or over the shoulder – not unlike how Harvey Weinstein was recently portrayed in She Said, albeit under wildly different contexts – is a little odd, to where you wonder if there was any point of him even being in scenes if all he does is stay silent while his parents do the talking for him.
Once again, though, Affleck’s creative streak shines through as he makes it abundantly clear via this narrative choice that Jordan is, and always has been, an icon, and to put somebody else in his shoes – very literally, in this case – would be to disrupt that mythical status which Air is attempting to confirm. The film talks about him like he’s a living god, but in a different way than, say, 80 for Brady did with Tom Brady. Here, it’s less hero worship and more about the genuine impact that Michael Jordan has (or is about to have) on popular culture at large, from Space Jam to those “Be Like Mike” commercials to, of course, the Air Jordan line itself.
Separating the actual man from the myth does make an unhealthy amount of sense in this instance, because Air is ultimately about the making of an icon that will long outlive any of the people that brought it into existence, even Michael Jordan.
It also happens to be a pretty great movie that’s entertaining, uplifting, and utterly celebratory of a figure who changed the world with just a shoe.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Air is a hugely entertaining and inspiring dramatization of Nike’s monumental business deal with Michael Jordan, which director Ben Affleck cleverly structures like an adrenalin-fuelled basketball game (but without any actual basketball) with writer Alex Convery providing sharply witted dialogue and storytelling in a film that ultimately celebrates the iconic status of the NBA superstar, even without the physical presence of Jordan himself.
