Review: Air (2023)

What’s an inspirational sports drama look like without the sports? It looks something like Ben Affleck’s Air, his easy going slice of Hollywood hokum that’s a terrific watch, even if it’s all rather weightless. I was a fan of Argo and Air has many of the same qualities. It shares its canny sense for Hollywood storytelling beats and breezy entertainment quality, even if the stakes of Affleck’s Best Picture-winning historical thriller about the Iranian hostage crisis are a bit bigger than the stakes of this movie about sneakers.

Starring Matt Damon as Nike basketball scout Sonny Vaccaro and Affleck himself as Nike founder Phil Knight, Air is a dramatization of Nike’s unlikely bid to become the official shoe of Michael Jordan in 1984. It follows all the usual sports movie beats as Sonny sets his eyes on an unlikely goal: he wants to sign Jordan, who goes third overall in the NBA draft, but who has already expressed interest to sign with Adidas, his favourite shoe company. Even if Adidas doesn’t land Jordan, which is unlikely, Converse will, since it dominates the NBA market, representing Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Julius Irving, and all the other stars of the day. But, like all such heroes, Sonny is determined and along with Nike’s basketball marketing VP Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), he comes up with a plan and executes it. Thus, Air is an origin story for our modern sneaker-obsessed culture, but it’s also an underdog story, with an unlikely team of folks beating the big rivals to win the game (so to speak) and change history.

Most of the film consists of dudes in rooms arguing and swearing and trying to convince each other of their rightness or wrongness, usually with clever phrases courtesy of Alex Convery’s script. Matt Damon plays Vaccaro as a frustrated, passionate obsessive, incapable of simple niceties, but well meaning and usually right in the end. Landing Jordan is his last chance to not only prove something of himself, but potentially save the entire basketball wing of Nike in the process. Damon’s a sturdy movie star and he’s good here, always credible, quick with a phrase, especially funny when he’s frustrated and red-faced and blustering. His easy chemistry with his real-life best friend Ben Affleck also makes the scenes between them flow.

Damon is the central character, but Affleck is the most memorable here, giving himself the role of the eccentric Phil Knight, who’s part slick 80s CEO, part Oregonian mystic. He dolls out Buddhist advice during business meetings, mentions making important business decisions during early morning runs, and never seems very normal in any given scene. His sitting at his desk with bare feet (despite owning a sneaker company) captures this oddness perfectly. But Affleck underplays the role, completely deflecting any wackiness or forced comedy, and the result is funnier for it.

Behind the camera, Affleck proves deft at pacing and hitting the necessary beats, from the early failures to the uphill battle to the dark night of the soul to the final victory. He also leans into the nostalgic appeal of the period detail with colourful jogging suits, gauzy decor in offices and homes, and lots of archival footage. Oh, and he loves obvious needle drops, most notably Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” which Bateman’s Strasser has some funny, maudlin lines about near the climax.

The rather slight nature of Air is what keeps it from being on par with Argo or Affleck’s best film, The Town. No matter how much we care about Vaccaro or want to see him beat those arrogant people at Converse or Adidas, the stakes are rather modest when all that hangs in the balance is Nike’s fiscal earnings. But even this element makes Air feel like a sports film. In sports, the actual games are immaterial. They matter because they matter to the characters, and to us, because we’re invested in the characters. With Air, we get to feel the rush of the game and the joy of victory, without the characters ever stepping foot on a court.

7 out of 10

Air (2023, USA)

Directed by Ben Affleck; written by Alex Convery; starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Messina, Chris Tucker, Viola Davis.

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