Ben Affleck, director. That’s the sentence that should have been repeated for many years now since his excellent debut Gone Baby Gone, to his award-winning films Argo and The Town. Yes, he had a critical and commercial flop, but on the whole Affleck’s work behind the camera has been solid. Air is no exception to being a piece of solid direction. What makes the film a slam dunk or not is how much you’re willing to buy into the “Capitalism is good, actually” narrative and swim in nostalgia regarding basketball and shoes.
The year is 1984, and Affleck and writer Alex Convery drop the viewer in it with a montage playing to Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing’. This is the era of MTV, of Reagan, of Mr. T branded cereals, and the emergence of rap as a dynamic musical force. America is hitting peak capitalism and we are all along for the ride. Everybody wants a slice of the action.
Nike is seen as the underdog in the world of basketball sponsorship. They have an effective reach in running shoes, but when it comes to their share of basketball, they are at 17% trailing their competitors Adidas and Converse. The company that started by selling shoes out of a trunk is looking to expand but they haven’t got the pull the other brands have.
Enter basketball enthusiast and slubby everyman Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) who has been tasked by Nike founding partner Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to bring in an athlete that will make the company a big player. The basketball division is floundering with the higher-ups not sure that they can commit revenue to something where they are being outclassed by other companies. Sonny really has no interest in shoes per se (he doesn’t even wear sneakers) but he knows basketball – far better than the people in his department. Marketing head Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and executive Howard White (Chris Tucker) believe in Sonny’s passion, but when Sonny decides to take a gamble on the whole department by recruiting one rookie, Michael Jordan, it’s an all or nothing game.
Films like Bennett Miller’s Moneyball managed to keep audiences engaged despite their interest in baseball. Aaron Sorkin’s script and David Fincher’s direction for The Social Network turned a film about Facebook into something that far transcended the product at the heart of it. Air doesn’t quite manage to do that. Alex Convey’s script is for the most part appealing and often very funny, but we are looking at sneakers and branded content.
For the most part what keeps the film afloat is the ensemble cast. Damon as the lead is reliably good – he’s an intelligent character who knows equally how to be charming and dismissive. Chris Messina as the over-the-top sports agent David Falk who represented Michael Jordan is blisteringly funny. The heart of the film, of course, is Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother Deloris (a piece of casting that Michael Jordan insisted upon) a smart operator who wants to protect her son from those who would exploit him. Particularly valuable is Matthew Maher as the eccentric shoe designer Peter Moore who waxes lyrical and philosophical about shoes and realises like a bunch of men at the Nike office, he’s hitting his midlife crisis.
Affleck allows some criticism of the system. Bateman’s Strasser discusses Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ and what it really means (dispossession). He also mentions sweatshops but rationalises them (not very well). Nike even then is not an ethically unchallenged company despite Knight’s penchant for Eastern philosophy and zen (and a grape-coloured Porsche).
Affleck’s decision to keep Jordan off screen until he appears in a montage of his life in Vaccaro’s weirdly prescient speech about his career and legacy is an interesting choice. Jordan is an icon, but surely, we are allowed to see the actor playing him. Is the film about Jordan or about a shoe? In the end it seems it’s really about a shoe and how Jordan fighting for equity stakes in sales changed how athletes were used by brands.
The target audience, basketball fans and sports shoe enthusiasts will find a lot to love in Affleck’s film, but if you fall outside of it there may be some trouble connecting with the material. It’s a snapshot of America and for all its feel-good intentions the creeping feeling that lives underneath it is that America is running an exploitation ring. A few good guys with good intentions can’t cover up that people are used for profit. Jordan and Nike may have made the big leagues with their partnership, but it was a roll of the dice (gambling being something Sonny was keen on) as to whether Jordan would live up to his incredible potential or a single accident could sink his career, and Nike’s investment.
Despite knowing the outcome and the cultural phenomenon that is Michael Jordan and Air Jordans, and Nike in general, Air manages to make the journey to sealing the partnership a comedic, and at times, heartfelt ride. The power of Damon and Davis is such that it is hard to not root for the collaboration. Affleck’s film will be a crowd-pleaser and will thrill a certain demographic. It’s a handsome production that gets the best out of the cast and enjoys taking the viewer on a nostalgia driven journey that mostly plays out in boardrooms and offices. Air is a good film for its kind, it’s breezy, witty, and overall entertaining. Affleck has acquired a great cast to tell a story about the zeitgeist, whether or not that zeitgeist is something that appeals to the viewer is very much a matter of time and place – if you were there it will be fantastic. If you weren’t it will be interesting. If you have zero investment in marketed brands and sports… well, it is no Jerry Maguire, but it might grow on you.
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman
Writer: Alex Convery
