Air

Remember the time when Nike was a pathetic little shoe company sitting woefully behind Converse and Adidas in market share? It’s not really the takeaway I was expecting from Air, the new Ben Affleck-directed film that is supposedly not a piece of corporate promotion but most definitely feels like it. Air chronicles the 1984 courtship between this positively tiny company and a man now considered the greatest athlete of all time by focusing on a shoeline and the revolutionary compensation structure enforced by that athlete’s mother. It’s a pretty thin premise for a film adjacent to Michael Jordan (and coasting off the lingering excitement stirred up by ESPN/Netflix’s thrilling The Last Dance) but Air is undoubtedly a crowd pleaser - even if it tastes a little manufactured.

Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), is a Nike sales executive whose various job duties are as mysterious as Jordan Schlansky’s; his boss, Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight (Affleck), doesn’t really know what he does other than fly around the country to identify college basketball players with collab potential and stop over in Vegas for a spin on the company’s dime. While Knight drives a monstrous purple Porsche (complete with cringe number plate) that would be pelted with eggs in most suburbs, the company faces bankruptcy. Studying the subtle confidence and on-court play of an 18-year-old Michael Jordan on TV, Sonny decides (against his boss and Jordan’s foul-mouthed agent’s advice) that the best way forward is to bet big on a shoe that will hopefully entice a teenager already loyal to Adidas. But first, he’ll have to go through his mother.

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro and Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan in Air [Warner Bros]

Joining Sonny in ensuring the company’s future by hitching it to the heels of an emerging athletic superstar are Nike’s Head of Marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), eventual Vice President of the Jordan brand Howard White (Chris Tucker in a role that had been left out of the original script and written in at the insistence of Jordan himself), and Creative Director Peter Moore (scene stealer Matthew Maher). They must battle with Jordan’s lonely-by-design agent David Falk (Chris Messina at his most aggressive/attractive), brand competitors also vying for Michael’s attention and ultimate pants-wearer Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis).

Much of the film follows the expected structure: Matt Damon studying basketball games and gaining insights evident to no one but him; Matt Damon coolly predicting each shoe company’s pitch to the Jordans and events playing out exactly as such; Matt Damon somehow getting through to a faceless Michael Jordan through highly emotive language and appeals to his mother’s regard for his future; it’s difficult to be surprising in a story whose outcome is so well-known, but Air does offer an interesting look into the creative process of product design and the risk versus reward thinking behind one of Nike’s most successful moves. As someone currently undertaking an intensive advertising course, I particularly enjoyed the consensus of confusion over who came up with the name, reflected in several scenes where Chris Messina’s mouthy David Falk and Nike shoe architect Peter Moore can’t decide who coined ‘Air Jordan’.

If Air is about anything more than the creation of a very successful shoeline, it’s the historical relevance of the Jordans’ bargaining power and the Air Jordan deal’s suggestion of athlete compensation. The real Sonny Vaccaro became known as a staunch defender of the right for athletes to be adequately compensated for the use of their image and likeness in the O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, a point the film ends on once the credits prepare to roll. This is nicely mirrored in Affleck and Damon’s new production company Artists Equity (of which this film is the first feature) which is reportedly built on the idea of more fairly distributing profits with those involved in film production instead of just among directors, producers and actors. 

Cool Ben Affleck as Nike suit Phil Knight in Air [Warner Bros]

It’s clear that the intent behind Affleck’s Air is good; he spoke to Michael Jordan at length, made the necessary adjustments to newcomer Alex Convery’s Black List script to accommodate Jordan’s suggestions (like Viola Davis playing his mother) and was more struck by responsibility to the Jordan family than to Nike. Matt Damon, when speaking about the project, described going over budget on three things - construction, cast and catering - and the positivity gained in these areas shows in the final product. Cast chemistry is great and everyone seems to be having a ball; the combo of Damon, Bateman and Tucker as their Nike equivalents is the kind of work dream team most of us yearn for when we grow up. Damon equated nabbing Viola Davis for the role of Jordan’s mother to Nike’s pipedream of nabbing Michael Jordan, and the tweaks made to the script to facilitate this add much-needed narrative strength.

The film’s inherent sense of fun and collaboration is bolstered by its throwback soundtrack. Is every single song featured just the smash hit of each artist or iconic theme already used in 80s cinema? Of course, but the reminder that Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” has excellent drive-home blastability was powerful in maintaining the high for my stint on the Kwinana freeway. Tunes from REO Speedwagon, Squeeze and Night Ranger will never get (figuratively) old, and Tangerine Dream’s Paul Haslinger even wrote a couple of new instrumental tracks for the film to complement its fondness for using “Love On A Real Train”. If the film’s scope doesn’t quite live up to its banging soundtrack, the problem lies with the hollowness of the idea rather than the execution.

It’s easy to feel odd about a film like this; admittedly, I’ve flip flopped between pure rejection and reluctant acceptance that movies about brands are here to stay. The problem with Air specifically, when compared to other films about the business of sport (Moneyball) or the business of brand building (The Founder) is that it doesn’t have the people connection of the former or the enamoured disgust of the latter. It’s a practical choice not to show Michael Jordan’s face in the film but also a creative one, as Affleck felt that its absence would only serve to deify him more and elevate the stakes. What it actually does is remove the story further from its anchor and forces us to connect with a product that, rather than going on to win six championships and establishing a legacy as a sports hero, made an insane amount of money from some while remaining unaffordable for many in the audience it targeted. 

Chris Tucker as Howard White in Air [Warner Bros]

Interestingly, the RogerEbert.com review of The Founder perfectly articulates what separates that film somewhat from its own corporate trappings. 

“It's an ad that becomes a warning before circling around and becoming another, darker kind of advertisement, and one of the most intriguing and surprising things about "The Founder" is that, in the end, it seems vaguely ashamed of itself for letting this happen.” - Matt Zoller Seitz 

Air does not display this same self awareness and cannot elevate itself above the fact that it’s really just a movie about a shoe and a larger brand, with some commentary on fair compensation sprinkled in towards the end. It’s not a sports biopic or a dramatic telling of the rise of an empire (à la the first third of cautionary big business tales like The Wolf Of Wall Street or The Social Network) but as a movie about a shoe worn by a legend, it’s undeniably enjoyable to watch.

And on that note…

AN OBSERVATION

It's funny that young folk in the 80s faced derision for “wanting their MTV” when no fewer than three people at our screening had to be told by security to put their phones away AFTER having been warned by the studio that we’d be monitored. If the influencers in front of us are the benchmark for current screen obsession, then it’s no wonder we’re getting movies about products.

All things considered, I enjoyed Air the way I enjoy a Woolies mud cake; it bears the branding of a company whose products are largely made in low-cost Asian countries, but it’s still pretty damned tasty.

Verdict:

Laura ☆☆☆

Alex   ☆☆☆

Air is in cinemas now.