‘Air,’ about Nike chasing Michael Jordan, is year’s best film so far

At an advance screening and reception for “Air” at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, I’d say at least 60% of the attendees sported Nike gym shoes aka sneakers aka kicks. The Air Jordan 1 Mid, the Nike Dunk Low SE, Air Jordan Retro High Tops, Nike Air Force 1, Nike Blazer Low Platform, etc., etc., in a myriad of bright and shiny colors. Granted, the crowd was dressed to suit the occasion — but it’s not as if we all went out and purchased Nikes in advance. They’re in our closets. They’re in a LOT of closets and hallways and mud rooms and garages and under the beds around the planet.

This is my way of saying, yes, director/producer/co-star Ben Affleck’s “Air” is on one level a gigantic commercial for Nike—but “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” was a love song to Christian Dior, and even the scandal-ridden “House of Gucci” was a glam tribute to that high-end luxury fashion house, and hey, the Devil Wore Prada. (And a whole lot more people have Nikes on their feet than Gucci or Dior or Prada on their backs.)

Thanks to Affleck’s sure-handed, period-piece-perfect direction, a crackling good screenplay by Alex Convery and the lively, funny, warm, passionate performances from the A-list cast, “Air” is as entertaining and fast-paced as an NBA Finals game that is destined for overtime. It’s also about so much more than the courting of the teenage Michael Jordan. Like “The Social Network”—a movie it surely will be compared to—this is a vibrant time capsule capturing a moment in the culture when a series of events led to a revolution that forever changed the worlds of sports, business, fashion and lifestyle. Even though “Air” is about Nike and Michael Jordan, Affleck has delivered a crowd-pleasing, “Jerry Maguire”-esque, underdog story.

Matt Damon is such a comfortable onscreen presence that we might not give him enough credit for his versatility. He is the master of the low-key, 100% authentic performance, and he’s at the top of his game as the slightly barrel-shaped, obstinate, high-stakes gambler and gym-rat visionary Sonny Vaccaro, a sports marketing exec who couldn’t possibly have cared less what you thought of him or what you said about him, as long as you listened to him, because nobody was more certain Sonny was right than Sonny.

The year 2023 is as far removed from 1984 as 1984 was from 1945, so while the veteran (cough-cough) viewer might think Affleck overdoes the signifiers starting with the opening-credits montage of pop-culture reminders from ’84, that’s ancient history for millions, so it’s the right touch.

By the mid-1980s, the NBA star power machine was kicking into the next gear thanks to the likes of Dr. J., Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, but this was still a time when CBS was airing some playoff games on tape delay, Converse and Adidas were the leading basketball shoe companies and Nike was the footwear of choice for runners. Enter Damon’s Sonny, who bounces about Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, in khakis and rumpled polo shirts, constantly barging into the offices of Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck), brand manager Howard White (Chris Tucker) and marketing VP Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), lobbying for the company to take an unprecedented gamble on 21-year-old Michael Jordan, who had been taken by the Bulls with the third overall pick in the 1984 draft. (Spoiler alert: It worked out for all parties.)

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So much of “Air” is about middle-aged men who have had success but find themselves at a crossroads, debating whether it’s wise to play it safe or to go all-in on a greatly gifted kid who still hadn’t been battle-tested. (In a smart move, Affleck chose not to have Jordan as a character in the story; we catch glimpses of stand-in Damian Young from behind, in the background.) Even though we know exactly how this will all play out, “Air” has the, well, air of a tense and taut procedural as Sonny races against the clock in a huge uphill race to overtake Converse and Adidas, the huge co-favorites to land Michael.

Sonny’s travels take him to meetings with the influential coach and mentor George Raveling (Marlon Wayans)—and to the Jordan home, where he has a backyard bench summit with Michael’s mother, Deloris, and what a grand and beautiful thing it is to have Viola Davis in this role. Davis’ Deloris is regal yet down-to-earth, visionary yet practical. She knows, more than anyone except MAYBE Michael, exactly who her son is and who he is going to be. (Chris Messina also provides some edgy comic relief as Jordan’s agent, David Falk, in one of those roles where the character is primarily on the phone, yelling at other people.)

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Director Affleck has a keen sense of pacing, of knowing when to crank up the tension and the conflicts, and when to let the story breathe. We get a number of insightful, human moments, e.g., when Bateman’s Strasser laments the state of his personal life while spending his birthday in Nike’s office, or when we see the eccentric genius of one Peter Moore (the wonderful character actor Matthew Maher), the Air Jordan designer who also created the famous Jumpman logo.

This is one of those movies in which every scene just … pops, even when we take little detours, as when Jay Mohr kills it as an exec with the German-owned Adidas, a powerful but humorless bunch whose pitch to the Jordans is exactly what Sonny told Deloris it would be. Everyone is terrific—Affleck expertly captures Phil Knight’s unique blend of laid-back, guru and take-no-prisoners business acumen—but it’s Damon’s slightly paunchy, world-weary, sometimes irritatingly persistent Sonny Vaccaro who is the undisputed MVP of this story. “Air” is the best movie of the year so far.