“A shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into it.” Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman)
Air is a rewarding docudrama about the insides of the NBA, specifically the 1984 recruitment of rookie Michael Jordan for Nike shoes. Similar to Moneyball and Jerry Maguire, the drama is dynamically real and unusually entertaining, thanks to director Ben Affleck and his buddy, Matt Damon.
Who would have known Jordan would become the most acclaimed athlete in history? Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a sports promoter at Nike, has a hunch that the gifted basketball player for UNC was at least the most talented player to be recruited for the NBA. And so goes the Air, one of the best sports stories ever put to film, filled with such energy that you might think even you could beat Jordan in a one-on-one.
Even today, Jordan makes $400 million a year because his mother, played with class and strength by EGOT Viola Davis, would not allow corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Converse to take advantage of her son with measly offers that protected their profits and gave little to him. One of the appropriate touches in Air is that we don’t get to see Jordan, the real one or a double, much at all because the story is about high-stakes dealing in the NBA, not shooting.
Director Affleck and writer Alex Convery craft a dynamic story in which sports agent David Falk (played splendidly shifty by Chris Messina) goes nose to nose with promoter Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon at his quiet best), who jousts similarly with Nike owner and friend Phil Knight (a delightfully evasive Affleck).
Although this is one time I’d like to see Sonny’s family background (but not a long-suffering wife, please), Sonny is a basketball man every second and a gambler as we see him early on losing in Vegas Gambling is a catalyst for his adventuresome spirit, which eventually pays him enviable dividends. Gambling on Jordan seems a no brainer from this distance in time; seeing Air is a no brainer if you’ve been laboring through the dross of post-Oscar films.
Everyone associated with this film, including us, is a winner.
Air
Director: Ben Affleck (Argo, The Town)
Screenplay: Alex Convery
Cast: Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting)
Run Time: 1h 52m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
