Air (2023 | USA | 114 minutes | Ben Affleck)
When Michael Jordan was inducted into the pro basketball Hall of Fame in 2009, his speech was petty, vindictive, and full of gloating over scores that were settled decades ago that he unequivocally won. The greatest basketball player to ever live even found it necessary to invite the person who beat out Jordan for the last spot on the varsity squad when Jordan was a high school sophomore for the purpose of insulting him. In what could have been an act of graciousness on achieving one of the highest honors in sports, Jordan chose to show he can be an enormous asshole to people he’s bested long ago.
Yet you don’t become the most dominant athlete (not basketball player) of your era without creating an incredible story along the way. The story of how Michael Jordan became the most marketable sports superstar before his rookie NBA season began is told in the new movie Air starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who also directs). The actor who plays Jordan, Damian Young, has exactly one line of dialogue, the same as the famous mime Marcel Marceau had in Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie. If there’s anything Ben Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery know, it’s that the story of Michael Jordan is best told the less Michael Jordan talks.
Air is told from the point-of-view of Sonny Vaccaro, a former Nike executive who notices that Michael Jordan would be a unique, game-changing talent before he stepped on a basketball court. Nike was then a billion dollar company with a fledgling basketball sneaker division. Vaccaro is played by Matt Damon and he spends most of the movie trying to sell Nike on Jordan and the Jordan family on Nike. At the time, Nike only had about 17% of the basketball shoe market, which was dominated by Converse and Adidas. Jordan was drafted third overall in the 1984 NBA draft behind Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon and trivia question answer Sam Bowie and it was assumed that Jordan would be signing with Adidas, whose eternal coolness was established with a Run DMC jam. Nike was a dominant presence in the running shoe market but its role in the basketball shoe market was much more tenuous.
The Nike strategy was to try to lure the best three or four players drafted after three (which, to be fair, included future legends John Stockton and Charles Barkeley) and have them split a $250,000 marketing budget. Damon’s Sonny Vaccaro, with the help of marketing guru Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), Nike executive Howard White (Chris Tucker) and shoe designing wunderkind Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) try to convince Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) to go all-in on Jordan. Vaccaro wanted to build a line of sneakers around Jordan, where the standard was for athletes to wear pretty much the same shoes as the other athletes in the sneaker company’s portfolio.
Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina) doesn’t want to even entertain a meeting with Nike (and neither does Jordan himself) so Vaccaro makes an endround and reaches out to Jordan’s mother Deloris, played by Viola Davis. The scene where Deloris and Vaccaro meet is one of my favorite scenes in the movie because you have two great actors sizing each other up, trying to figure out what each person needs from the other without trying to give away too much.
For the seriousness between Viola Davis and Matt Damon, the interplay between Affleck’s Knight and Damon’s Vaccaro is played for more laughs. Knight is seen as a weirdo CEO that likes reclining in his office chair with his bare feet on his desk who gives new age-y quotes. He was hilarious. I sometimes forget how good of a comedic actor he is, though he has a resume full of funny bits.
The humor, the acting, the storytelling, the compelling story of Michael Jordan and the growth of Nike, all made for an enjoyable film-watching experience. The year is young, but this is my favorite movie I’ve seen in 2023 so far.
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Air is in theaters now.