Movie Review: 'Air' Thrives in Nostalgia

Air (2023)

Directed by Ben Affleck

Written by Alex Convery

Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker

Release Date April 5th, 2023

Published April 7th, 2023

Air takes advantage of the collective nostalgia of sports fans of the 1990s. It's a powerful force that alters our critical thinking and places audiences in a welcoming headspace, regardless of our critical faculties. Thus how we get a movie about corporate titans, literal billionaires, that becomes a shaggy underdog narrative about overcoming the odds. Never mind that Nike always had the means to land Michael Jordan and make him the global brand he became, it's more compelling to pretend that they had no chance and were some kind of upstart in an industry they'd already made a billion dollars in, in just a decade of existence.

Our culturewide nostalgia for what Michael Jordan represents leaves us willing to accept a story about the triumph of a black entrepreneur that is centered on the success of the white men who proved capable of seeing his worth and had a begrudging willingness to bend their profits to his will. Yes, there was still plenty of stakes in 1984 and there was always the chance that Michael Jordan could have gotten hurt or developed a disinterest in greatness, but we know that didn't happen and that fact makes this story much easier to be nostalgic about.

The makers of Air are aware of the issues we are bringing with us into seeing Air. The film is aware that Nike is the weird cult of a billionaire's personality. The filmmakers are aware that they are taking a story of black excellence and centering it on a group of white men, just as Nike was well aware that they were seeking athletes they could exploit for financial gain that would mostly go to the white men exploiting them. The film pitches these problems in dialogue and bats them away by telling you a pretty good story about charismatic characters in a complicated and fast paced fashion. Does this excuse the sins involved? No, not in the least, but there is no denying the entertainment value of our blinding nostalgia.

Matt Damon stars in Air as Sonny Vaccaro, basketball guru. Hired to define the Nike Basketball brand, Vaccaro works alongside marketing guru, Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), to find athletes willing to be paid to wear Nike basketball gear. As we join the story, it's 1984 and Nike ranks third in the world in basketball shoes. Adidas and Converse are numbers 1 and 2 and the biggest stars are making deals with them. This includes the top 3 picks in the 1984 NBA draft, Hakeem Olajuwon, Sam Bowie, and Michael Jordan. Nike has high hopes for maybe inking a deal with someone named Mel Turpin.

Then, late one night, Sonny Vaccaro watches Michael Jordan's legendary NCAA Tournament winning shot from the 1982 NCAA tournament championship. In that incredible video, he sees something that no one else had seen before, according to the movie. In Sonny's estimation, Michael Jordan, then a Freshman, was actually the first choice to make this game winning shot. Of all the stars at the disposal of legendary College Basektball coach Dean Smith, he chose to draw up a play that relied on Michael Jordan to make the most important shot. On top of that, Jordan appears unafraid of this kind of pressure, he's calm and he confidently hits a shot that hundreds of other players might not have had the nerve to make.

This is the beginning of a career defining obsession for Sonny Vaccaro. From this point forward, he's determined to bring Michael Jordan to Nike and he's willing to risk everything to do it. This includes violating the norms of the shoe business. In a move that would become legend in his industry, Vaccaro went around legendary sports agent superpower, David Falk (Chris Messina), and spoke with the real power behind the Michael Jordan legend, Michael's beloved mother, Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis). This meeting will define the life of Sonny Vaccaro and the Jordan family forever.

This pivotal moment between Vaccaro and Mrs. Jordan and their respective actors, Matt Damon and Viola Davis, is quite good. Damon and Davis are incredible actors and the dynamic between them is remarkably moving. Vaccaro's desperation and incredible self-worth and Deloris Jordan's supreme intelligence and resolve are an explosive combination. The chemistry of Damon and Davis is palpable and their scenes together in Air have weight simply from their actorly presence. Did this meeting actually happen this way? Does it matter? It works in the movie.

That's the thing about Air, as a movie, if you separate it from history, and much context, it's an exceptional movie. The characters are very compelling, the story is told at an incredible pace and the twists and turns are exciting to watch, even as we know the outcome. Ben Affleck is a terrific director; he knows exactly what makes this story so interesting and he maximizes that quality. It's not suspense, it's nostalgia. It's a bit of curiosity about how this legendary story unfolded, with a healthy dose of classic Hollywood storytelling magic. Affleck and his team understand these qualities on an innate level.

It's pretty much undeniable, for me, that Air is a terrific movie. The acting is first rate and the soundtrack provides some of the most incredible needle drops in film history. Fans of 80s classics like the soundtrack star, Sister Christian by Night Ranger, Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, even Cyndi Lauper's brilliant, emotional ballad, Time After Time, which is rendered as an epic in how it is deployed in Air, all hit huge nostalgic sweet spots. Each of these needle-drop moments hits big, it's designed to be awesome, it is awesome, and, much like the story being told, each song captures that giddy form of nostalgia that most people find irresistible.

Again, this doesn't excuse the problems. Nothing really can. It's up to you how you take it all. I find the film endlessly entertaining. I also find much of the idea behind the movie insidious. Celebrating capitalism in this way is undeniably queasy. The film is forced to confront that fact with some awkward dialogue. Jason Bateman's marketing guru is forced at one point to deliver a monologue about the moral compromises he must make to work at Nike. In this scene he talks openly about how Nike shoes are made in foreign countries by cheap labor.

It's part of an odd monologue overall that starts with sweatshops in foreign countries and becomes about Bateman's Strasser being separated from his wife and only seeing his daughter on weekends. Each week, when he sees his daughter for four hours on a Sunday, he brings her a pair of Nikes and his daughter loves it, and by extension, she keeps loving him. But he's also had to come to terms with where those shoes really come from, the massive mark-up on these shoes and the daughter's of others who suffer to make them.

The needle attempting to be threaded here is to acknowledge Nike's legacy of abusing labor in foreign countries while distracting us with the personal struggles of a man desperate to connect with a daughter he believes is beginning to forget him. It didn't quite work on me. Bateman delivers the monologue with skill but you can't help but feel the invisible hand of Nike in the background begging you to look the other way about human rights abuses, low to no wages, and foreign dictators who've funded bloody empires by allowing Nike to abuse their populace.

But, Phil Knight, played with a bravura charisma by the director himself, Ben Affleck, is also a man who has donated more than 2 billion dollars to charity, a penance of sorts, though one he would be unlikely to acknowledge as such. Knight has positioned himself as a billionaire with a good heart, a charitable man, and a smart businessman. That his empire is stained with a bit of blood is something that Air obscures with nostalgia and misdirection. There is an objective wrong to celebrating such bloody corporate triumph but when it is done as well as it is done here, it's remarkably seductive.

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