If you have nothing better to do, you might as well watch this movie. Behind the rather ambiguous and pretentious title, Air hides a mildly entertaining 2023 movie based on actual events. We will be following Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike executive as he tries to sign Michael Jordan to the brand. Since we all know what happened, you could say that the tension disappeared from this movie before it even began. Directionless and meandering under Ben Affleck’s direction, Air seems more like a promotional stunt for Nike than a regular movie. Luckily, we have an all-star cast that’s going to make this capitalism-gone-wrong story feel a little better.
And just to be perfectly clear, Ben Affleck’s previous three directorial efforts, Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo were quite good. I just don’t understand why this story is worth telling. There’s nothing that much wild about it. It’s just a combination of coincidences that yielded the famous Air Jordan shoe. However, since we don’t get to see many movies about shoemakers, I guess this one will have to do. I think its two biggest problems were editing and tone. Clocking in at 106 minutes, Air is a rather clunky and long movie. Also, do not confuse it with the 2015 science fiction movie Air, starring Norman Reedus.
The deliberate pacing and weird atmosphere are interrupted by sudden sketch-like and surprisingly effective humorous scenes. If the movie had more of these and fewer of those pretentious scenes where characters are forced to name funny facts about the Nike company, Air would have been a much better movie. Still, I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re a fan of those big movies based on true events. Apart from chubby Matt Damon and slim Viola Davis, we also have Jason Bateman and Chris Tucker. So, with the addition of Ben Affleck, you could say that Air has an all-star cast that did a good job.
It is the year of our lord Satan 1984 and Nike is a billion-dollar company that’s in trouble. They’re dominating the running shoe market but can’t touch the basketball shoe one. Queue Sonny Vaccaro, an experienced and capable executive brought in to fix this problem. He gets a $250.000 budget to sign three NBA players who are going to promote Nike’s new line of basketball shoes. However, Sonny has a different idea. An idea that’s going to change this company forever…
Air is one of those modern movies trying to exploit eighties nostalgia by cramming in as much as songs from that decade as possible. As a fan of that type of music, I have to say that enough is enough. We’ve seen something similar happen in the breezy British crime thriller The Business. Another thing I found hilarious were the heavy-handed attempts to appease the Jordan family. Sometimes they came off as not only racists but also ruthless and insensitive. It’s a world of old white men out there and we’re just living in it. Apart from Viola Davis, Air does not feature a single female character.
Old White Men is actually the title of one of the episodes of The Dropout miniseries about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. It’s pretty good and I recommend you check it out. Speaking of miniseries, I think that the huge success of The Last Dance has a lot to do with why we got this movie now. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Finally, speaking of characters, I loved Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, the actual shoe designer. Did you know that he left Nike after designing Air Jordan and joined Adidas? He’s the guy behind the famous new Adidas logo that’s, I guess, now THE Adidas logo.
Director: Ben Affleck
Writer: Alex Convery
Cast: Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Chris Messina, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Matthew Maher
Fun Facts: Michael Jordan requested that Viola Davis plays his mother and that Howard White (played by Chris Tucker) must be involved somehow.
Rating:
IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16419074/
