'AIR' Is a Damn Good Watch
There’s a particular story that plays pretty well in movies. It follows an unsung office that— for one brief, shining moment in history—did a really, really good job. Someone took a risk! Followed their gut. Made the right decision. And for all the trouble, they won big. For us viewers, we leave the theater feeling like the work we do in our desks jobs might somehow make for something deeply meaningful, if only passion and instinct could become perfectly aligned.
Ben Affleck's new film, AIR, is that story. The trailer will tell you that AIR, out this week, depicts the true story of how Nike executives Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) and Phil Knight (Affleck) convinced Michael Jordan to sign a shoe deal with the swoosh. But the heart of the tale lies in Damon’s portrayal of Vaccaro as an everyman, because that guy is also us. Damon has excelled at playing these kinds of characters throughout his entire career, but there's something even more relatable to his performance this time around. He's less Sonny Vaccaro and more like the personified dream of being right in every work meeting—and seeing your ideas succeed. He's the Van Leeuwen employee who knows that if the company just listened and created their Mountain Dew Baja Blast-flavored collab idea, they would be swimming in cash. It’s why AIR, a movie about the people who yelled at each other very loudly over a shoe deal, simply works—even without the guy who stepped in the damn shoes and made them so great.
Yes, audiences will wonder why they’re watching a film about Nike’s AIR Jordan shoes without the name Jordan in the title—or without a significant presence from the man himself. So it feels a little strange when one of AIR's big moments arrives when Vaccaro screams, “We just signed Michael Jordan!” to an office full of 40-year-old white guys, who are hugging and cheering because they made a business deal. The oddities of the film are obvious—Affleck truly goes full Moneyball with the story of Jordan and Nike—and I won’t fault anyone who’s turned away because of them.
At the same time, AIR nails its portrayal of every story it promised to highlight. In real life, Vaccaro may not have given a big ol’ Hollywood speech to sell Jordan on signing with Nike—but he did revolutionize how young athletes can make a name (and a good dollar) for themselves before turning pro. How? Because Deloris Jordan, MJ’s mother, looked out for her son and demanded he received a percentage of every AIR Jordan shoe that Nike sold. Forever. And it's a damn good thing that she did. On my crowded subway back home from the theater, roughly half of all the sneakers I saw had the Nike swoosh on them—if not the AIR Jordan logo itself.
Let's talk about Affleck. Somehow—in-between all those Dunkin' runs and interviews (rightfully) praising J-Lo—the man knows how to direct a film that will make skeptics emotionally invested in knowing whether or not Adidas, Converse, or Nike had the right people working for them in 1984. Hell, Affleck made me like his portrayal of Batman, even though he starred in some of the worst superhero films I’ve ever seen. It’s just a certain charisma, emulated again in AIR as Knight, that has me sold every time he’s on screen.
Affleck also moves the film along by padding AIR’s runtime with much-needed humor. I’ve seen enough Marvel quips in the past decade to seriously question if we, as a society, maybe forgot how to be funny. Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery—who managed to get his script for AIR film picked up off of the Black List—certainly have not. We hear simple, timeless jokes about how running sucks... and no shoe can fix that. Whether by design or not, Chris Tucker (as the man who would become Vice President of Jordan Brand, Howard White) looks like he’s going to shit himself in every scene. Another major highlight: the back-and-forth jabs over phone calls between Damon and Chris Messina (who plays Michael Jordan's agent, David Falk) that had the theater audience hooting and hollering.
Still, the funniest bit in AIR, to me, is that the pivotal scene between Vaccaro and Mrs. Jordan never occurred in real life. Other peculiar things went down in the real world, too. Jordan allegedly never liked Vaccaro—and the Nike executive was mysteriously fired six years after the legendary hooper signed with the brand. But it hardly matters. AIR follows a guy who is just doing his job well, against all odds, so it only makes sense that one of the challenges he faces is a fight against reality. AIR a story about getting as close to greatness as you can—even if that greatness is striking a shoe deal, or yours truly watching some A-list actors pretend to strike a shoe deal. Of course, Michael Jordan eventually wore those sneakers and won six championships. This is just the prequel, and that's good enough for me.
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