AIR (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Air, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 4, 2023

At its core, the story of Air is the story of how a multi-million-dollar company made one big, daring decision that would directly lead it to become a multi-billion-dollar corporation. It's not exactly a feel-good underdog story, no matter how hard the filmmakers might try to make it into one.

That's one of the many tricks accomplished by director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery: Their film doesn't try to convince of that. Instead, it's simply a story about the human element of marketing and sales pitches, and regardless of what story one is trying to tell, focusing on people as thinking, emotional entities is always the right choice.

There is one major exception to how Affleck approaches this story, and it, too, is the correct one, even if the decision seems to fly in the face of the previously mentioned rule about drama. We can accept it, though, because the film also is about and understands the concept of legend. In this case, the legend is Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player to ever play the game—a man whose talent, skill, and personality essentially made the sport as popular as it ever was.

One could go on for a long time about the impact and legacy of Jordan, and the filmmakers wisely count on that. He's the most important character here, but apart from some archival footage (which is intentionally downplaying the film's most impressive moment: a montage of a young man's future and a legend's past), we never see his face.

Some of that decision must be for dramatic effect, of course. In case it isn't clear yet, Convery's screenplay tells the tale of how some executives at Nike, a shoe company that barely figured into the market of basketball sneakers, convinced a rookie Jordan, who had yet to play a professional game of basketball, to sign a sponsorship deal with them.

Jordan had other offers, obviously, with companies he would have preferred over a relatively fledging one that was more about selling running shoes that people could wear in their everyday lives, so the fact that we never see the young man's face means that we never know what he's thinking at any given moment. Since this is a film about how well ideas and ideals are being sold, the lack of a reaction lends at least some tension to a story with an outcome that has basically been a given fact of culture for almost 40 years at this point.

The real dramatic and thematic coup of keeping Jordan faceless throughout the narrative is that it retains the man as an idea. Because this story is also about certain people believing in the greatness that will be, we get to imbue that idealism with our common knowledge of the greatness we know will come from Jordan, as well as everything else we know about and have invested in his life and legacy.

The film might have worked without Affleck's ability to transcend nostalgia and turn it into some grander, idealistic concept, but there's little doubt it's a better film because of that element. The story is strong enough, after all, to keep a lot of cynicism about the way Nike is portrayed here at bay. It's a scrappy company worth many millions after going public, but Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a marketing executive with the shoe-maker's basketball division, thinks it can compete with the big hitters of that market in 1984.

For that, they'll need a few future stars, and while marketing whiz Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) believes the sponsorship budget should go toward three or four promising draft picks, Sonny decides to make a gamble on Jordan. His boss Phil Knight (Affleck), who is often shoeless and meditates in a show of humility that his custom luxury car betrays, doesn't buy into the idea at first, and Jordan's agent David Falk (Chris Messina) is trying to keep his client away from the company. Bypassing all of that, Sonny takes a trip to North Carolina to meet with Jordan's mother Deloris (Viola Davis) and father James (Julius Tennon) in order to make the case that their son should give Nike a second thought.

All of this is pretty light on plot and anything of much significance. It compensates for that, though, with pitch-perfect casting of a lot of strong personalities, as well as how Convery turns a lot of business meetings and negotiations into vignettes that allow those personalities to shine. Damon makes for a sympathetic loner of a protagonist, who has dedicated his life to this sport out of pure passion and only hopes more people will feel that same way, and Bateman's deadpan sarcasm allows us to be caught off guard when his character drops it for some sincerity (The character's "ambivalence" toward the company's manufacturing processes feels like lip service to an obvious criticism, though).

Davis is a calm but undeniably determined presence as the mother of a young man whom she knows will change the world, and the instant, continuous warmth Tennon brings to Jordan's father hits especially hard if one knows his story. Meanwhile, Affleck, Messina, Chris Tucker (as another executive), Marlon Wayans (as Jordan's Olympics coach), and Matthew Maher (as the man who designs the soon-to-be iconic shoe) make quick but sturdy impressions in their smaller roles.

Ultimately, Air amounts to a lot of intelligent filmmaking and thoughtful performances trying to sell us on the ideals of bold moves and decisions in the world of business. Most of that is of questionable worth, of course, but it's impossible to deny the strength of the filmmaking and these performances, as well as the impact of how much this film truly believes in the power of legend.

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