'Air' balls hard | movie review

Ben Affleck's Air tells the story of how Nike struck the biggest partnership in sports history with Michael Jordan and the Air Jordan

Air is a sturdy crowd-pleasing “based on a true story” dramedy that leverages every aspect of the biopic genre to a precision level.

There's always that one scene in movies about inventors or companies where the main character gets up and gives an impassioned speech about why what they're doing is important or matters. Ben Affleck's Air is no exception. However, when Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) gives a speech to convince a young Michael Jordan (Damian Young) to partner with Nike on what will eventually become the Air Jordan, Affleck cuts the scene with archival footage from the real Jordan's life. News clips covering his highest highs and lowest lows. In one cut we see an archival news report about his father's murder before cutting back to the film's version of James Jordan (Julius Tennon). The effect is nothing short of show-stopping, especially since the film takes care to never let us get a full look at the young Michael.

That emotional impact was particularly surprising to me considering I don't have much of an attachment to the subject matter at all.

The movie begins with a breezy montage of 1984. Everything from Princess Diana to Tetris is displayed setting the backdrop. Further adding to the background is perhaps the most shocking true fact the movie exposes: “Nike… 17%.” That's the share of the athletic shoe market that Nike commands (today it's over 40%). And while the upstart company had a fast start, their biggest competitors Adidas and Converse continue to cover the majority of the feet in the nation. Air has such a distinct sense of its time and place that it makes it hard to fathom the colossus it eventually becomes.

That's thanks in part to the performances by the ensemble — and Affleck in particular as Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight — that perfectly captures the energy of a startup that is finding its footing as it finds wider success. The movie is even interspersed with title cards the ten principles of Nike's mission statement — their inclusion, as someone who has worked in many start-ups, felt facetious. In direct opposition to Knight, who has become somewhat of a corporate shill (despite still traversing the office barefoot), is Sonny. Hilariously, and like many companies, Sonny's role is obscure and a bit undefined with the goal of “making things better.” However, he can be boiled down to a talent scout.

With Nike's back against the wall and the NBA draft behind them, it's Sonny's job to find three basketball players to split a $250k partnership with Nike to save their failing basketball shoe brand — wild to think about. After going through all the potentials from the top draft picks, Sonny sets his sights on young upstart Michael Jordan. He could just see the spark of greatness, even when others doubt him. So sets off his campaign to lock down MJ, even if it means betting his entire career — and Nike's entire budget — on it. Even Sonny's greatest supporter in the office, Howard White (Chris Tucker — doing scene-stealing comedic character work) is skeptical of their chances. Still, Sonny fights for it.

Like Ford v. Ferrari or Moneyball, as two recent hall of fame examples, Air is the epitome of a dad movie. As in, dads will watch it and nod along like they too are an expert in athlete-brand partnerships at a major shoe corporation. There's something about process movies — or movies about people just passionately and effectively doing their job well (i.e. every Tom Hanks movie) — that gets dads going. Well, call me a daddy because I was nodding along with them.

Affleck breezily moves between scenes of Sonny analyzing game tape, working with wacky designer Pete Moore (Matthew Maher), or strategizing around their pitch meeting — “Phil, you have to walk in seven minutes late.” It's the kind of technical fodder that we see more often in journalism movies, here it's a little more fun. And further tying into the theme of startup culture, more than once a character references the scramble to create the pitch feeling like “the old Nike days” — that glorious period of a startup's life where you have nothing and everything to lose, but you're having fun scrappily surviving.

Even with that momentum, Air takes a few moments to breathe (pun intended) thanks to two key players. First is George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), Jordan's coach for the 1984 Olympic Games, who in a barnburner biopic inspirational one-scene special recounts how Martin Luther King, Jr. gifted him his “I Have a Dream” speech. Second is Viola Davis as Michael's mother Deloris Jordan who, for lack of a better phrase, is the heart of the movie in both of her expertly-acted scenes (she's not an EGOT winner for nothing). In particular, a negotiation scene late in the movie, performed with steady confidence only an actress Davis' stature can muster, evokes the strongest emotional response of the movie.

Air is as sturdy of a crowd-pleasing “based on a true story” dramedy as they come — this coming from someone who thinks Argo, Affleck's last directorial effort, is one of the worst Best Picture winners in recent memory. However, where Argo's emotional manipulation feels like… well, manipulation, Air feels genuine. It never overstates its stakes or forces you to care about its characters. Even a mid-movie soliloquy where marketer Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) tells Sonny about his divorce and estranged relationship with his daughter only mines the smallest of eye rolls. Does Air do anything to reinvent the biopic? Far from it. Does it leverage every aspect of it to a precision level? Absolutely. It's the equivalent of watching Michael Jordan fly through the air to dunk. An athlete performing to his highest technical level, but with extra magic that only he could assemble.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.