Air

It feels impor­tant to note that Ben Affleck’s lat­est direc­to­r­i­al effort is not real­ly about Michael Jor­dan, the great­est bas­ket­ball play­er – and quite pos­si­bly the great­est ath­lete – of all time. It’s not even real­ly a movie about shoes. Rather, Air, which fic­tion­alis­es the con­cep­tion of Nike’s flag­ship sneak­er line in 1984 and the play the com­pa­ny made to sign Jor­dan to an endorse­ment deal, is a film about per­son­al excel­lence and perseverance.

This is a theme that Affleck has chased through­out his film­mak­ing career, from Gone Baby Gone through to Live By Night (and Good Will Hunt­ing, if you go back even fur­ther). He is drawn to resilient, mav­er­ick pro­tag­o­nists, whether they’re cops, crim­i­nals, CIA agents, or in the case of Air, cor­po­rate bods like Nike bas­ket­ball scout Son­ny Vac­caro (Matt Damon) whose pas­sion for his work is matched only by his reluc­tance to play by the rules. It’s a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment – even when the indi­vid­ual works as part of a larg­er group or team, their solo great­ness is a defin­ing feature.

Much is made with­in the film of Michael Jordan’s great­ness. As the film opens, Jor­dan is 21-years-old and the third over­all pick in the 1984 NBA draft. He’s in his rook­ie sea­son with the Chica­go Bulls, a star-in-the-mak­ing, but not quite in the stratos­phere. While pour­ing over Jordan’s game footage in hopes of pitch­ing a play­er with the pow­er to turn Nike’s for­tunes in the bas­ket­ball busi­ness around – at the time, they were trail­ing behind Con­verse and Adi­das by a con­sid­er­able mar­gin – Vac­caro realis­es it’s not just tal­ent that Jor­dan pos­sess­es. It’s magic.

As the film tells it, plen­ty of oth­er peo­ple, includ­ing the teams at Con­verse and Adi­das, recog­nised Jordan’s tal­ent, but there’s only one oth­er per­son besides Vac­caro who tru­ly fore­saw his tra­jec­to­ry. His moth­er Deloris, played here by Vio­la Davis, is Jordan’s advo­cate, approach­ing her son’s career with a calm per­spicu­ity, unfazed by cor­po­rate raz­zle daz­zle. She wants what will best serve her son’s inter­ests, and safe­guard not only his finan­cial future, but his per­son­al legacy.

Jor­dan him­self is a phan­tom. He speaks only a hand­ful of words, and is only ever shot from behind – this does ensure the film’s scope is laser-focused on what is real­is­ti­cal­ly a small chap­ter in the athlete’s life, but it does feel a lit­tle strange to only see a character’s thoughts and feel­ings relayed through those around him when the whole nar­ra­tive rests on his shoul­ders. Giv­en we already know how the sto­ry ends (Jor­dan signs the deal, the Air Jor­dan becomes pos­si­bly the most well-known sneak­er in the world) per­haps this is Affleck and screen­writer Alex Convery’s method of not con­de­scend­ing to an already invest­ed audi­ence, but it does feel like a con­ve­nient way of avoid­ing the tricky task of char­ac­ter­is­ing a legend.

The most we see of Jor­dan is dur­ing the cru­cial meet­ing between his fam­i­ly and the Nike team. When Vac­caro sus­pects he’s los­ing Jordan’s inter­est, he recalls advice giv­en to him by best friend and bas­ket­ball leg­end George Rav­el­ing (Mar­lon Wayans), relaid through an anec­dote about watch­ing Mar­tin Luther King impro­vise the I Have A Dream speech. Inspired by Raveling’s rec­ol­lec­tion of this piv­otal moment, Vac­caro tells Jor­dan his future: the highs and lows, the tabloid muck­rak­ing and the lev­el of great­ness to which he will final­ly ascend. His rous­ing mono­logue is inter­cut with real-life news­pa­per clip­pings from Jordan’s career, illus­trat­ing that Vac­caro is cor­rect, in a charis­mat­ic dis­play of Hol­ly­wood myth­mak­ing. We know this is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly not how it went down, but in this moment, Vac­caro dis­plays a par­al­lel great­ness to Jor­dan. He con­vinces him to take the deal.

Air does at least seem wry­ly aware of the strained rela­tion­ship between cre­ativ­i­ty and cap­i­tal­ism. Repeat­ed­ly char­ac­ters butt heads over the risks in Vaccaro’s ambi­tious strat­e­gy, with Nike CEO Phil Knight – Affleck on charm­ing form as the Bud­dhist apho­rism-spout­ing, pur­ple leg­gings-sport­ing Cool Boss – relay­ing that the com­pa­ny can’t afford to put a foot wrong since he took it pub­lic. Hav­ing grown his sneak­er busi­ness from a scrap­py car-boot oper­a­tion to a bil­lion-dol­lar organ­i­sa­tion, Knight seems to long for his more cav­a­lier past while locked away in his impres­sive office. It’s a goofy but charm­ing per­for­mance from Affleck, and undoubt­ed­ly an affec­tion­ate one (a title card at the end points out Knight has donat­ed a whole $2 bil­lion of his $41.5 bil­lion for­tune to charity).

Mean­while, in open­ing the film with Dire Straits’ Mon­ey for Noth­ing – a song about the com­pa­ra­bly easy life of the rich and famous com­pared to blue col­lar work­ers – over a mon­tage of the most mem­o­rable adver­tise­ments and prod­ucts that devel­oped dur­ing the age of ​“Greed is Good”, Affleck demon­strates a lit­tle aware­ness that pit­ting a mega cor­po­ra­tion like Nike as the under­dog is pre­pos­ter­ous. Under­scor­ing this is a delight­ful exchange between Vac­caro and har­ried Nike mar­ket­ing bod Rob Strass­er (Jason Bate­man on Michael Bluth-esque form) in which Strass­er reflects on the moment he realised Bruce Springsteen’s ​‘Born in the U.S.A’ is not a patri­ot­ic anthem, but rather a bleak reflec­tion on a work­ing class man who returns from the Viet­nam War alien­at­ed and isolated.

This lit­tle aside acts as a par­al­lel for the exploita­tion of art and artists by cap­i­tal­ism – a thread that appears when Deloris stip­u­lates that her son should receive a per­cent­age of the gross rev­enue from every pair of Nike shoes sold. There’s some irony in the fact that Air is an Ama­zon film, con­sid­er­ing the com­pa­ny is fre­quent­ly at the heart of labour dis­putes, but this point at least – that the worker’s pow­er lies with know­ing their worth – rings true. And in order to lever­age this pow­er, work­ers must stand togeth­er. While Vac­caro is tal­ent­ed, he’s only able to realise his scheme with the sup­port of his col­leagues: Howard White (a delight­ful Chris Tuck­er) and shoe design­er Peter Moore (the under­rat­ed Matthew Maher) as well as Knight and Strasser.

By no means is Air a rad­i­cal film, but it does man­age to pack a lot into its run­time, all while main­tain­ing a feath­er-light pace and snap­py sense of humour. To wit, Affleck and his team nail the cast­ing – while his on-screen reunion with Damon is a delight, it’s just as reward­ing to see Damon and Davis share scenes, and Chris Messi­na is a scene-steal­er as the foul-mouthed ace agent David Falk. At a point in Hol­ly­wood where cast­ing relies more on algo­rithms and Insta­gram fol­low­ers than actu­al chem­istry, Air demon­strates the impor­tance of that on-screen alche­my that can’t be pre­de­ter­mined by a computer.

So it’s not the Michael Jor­dan sto­ry, or a two-hour les­son about the sci­ence of sneak­er design. Instead Air is an engag­ing Hol­ly­wood fairy­tale, about extra­or­di­nary peo­ple and the scope of their ambi­tion, and the impor­tance of advo­cat­ing not only for your own worth, but for the worth of those around you. To bas­ket­ball, and specif­i­cal­ly to Jor­dan, it assigns a sort of mytho­log­i­cal sta­tus – reflect­ing the sport’s obses­sion with sta­tis­tics and num­bers that runs par­al­lel to some­thing less tan­gi­ble: a feel­ing that devel­ops when we see great­ness before us. It’s what you’re pre­pared to do to nur­ture that feel­ing – par­tic­u­lar­ly in a world rife with exploita­tion and oppo­si­tion – that mat­ters most.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.