Affleck’s basketball shoe tale is a slam dunk
If you love basketball and you want to see an in depth movie about Michael Jordan, watch Netflix’s The Last Dance. But if you love stories about high-stakes gambling, go see Ben Affleck’s Air. What Affleck gives us here isn’t a sports story. It’s a tale about business, and a wonderfully juicy one at that. Air tells the story of how Jordan’s contract with Nike nearly single-handedly transformed the middling Oregon-based company into the world’s greatest apparel empire, thanks to the story’s main characters placing big bets: on Jordan by Sonny Vaccaro, a then little-known Nike marketing executive; on Vacarro by his boss, Nike founder Phil Knight, and on Nike by Jordan’s family, particularly his mother Deloris.
While director Affleck and first-time feature writer Alex Convery take some liberties, their film is mostly accurate in its portrayal of how Nike wagered its entire basketball budget on creating a groundbreaking sport shoe brand: the Air Jordan. The film takes place in the early 1980s, when industry powerhouses Converse and Adidas were the shoe manufacturers most associated with basketball, controlling the lions’ share of the market (Nike only had 17% at the time). Converse and Adidas rose to the top by tying their brands not to a single player, but to a stable of top players. As Air opens, Nike is casting about for stars that the company can afford, which are far and few between.
Sonny Vacarro is tasked with finding this untapped talent, and Sonny, as played with great verve by Matt Damon, is harried and stressed through most of the picture, personifying the desperation of Nike’s position. At the time, the public thought of Nike as a running shoe, and Sonny becomes fixated on finding a talent who could catapult Nike out of that niche and into the basketball apparel business stratosphere.
Vaccaro sets his sights on a University of North Carolina draft contender named Michael Jordan, recognizing Jordan’s unparalleled confidence and competitiveness before anyone else. Sonny stakes his career on Jordan’s promise, and the movie follows Sonny’s attempts to get everyone at Nike to trust his instincts. Similar to Ford v Ferrari, another Damon-helmed picture, Air is a business film masquerading as a sports movie. It offers viewers the same intense rooting interest in its story and characters and satisfying emotional pay off.
That Affleck has assembled a stellar cast doesn’t hurt, either. Besides Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Marlon Wayans, and Chris Messina all have major roles, and all seem to be having just as much fun as the audience is having watching them. Messina steals every scene he’s in with his hot-headed portrayal of Jordan’s agent David Falk, and he and Damon have a terrific, heated rapport.
Affleck casts himself as Phil Knight, bringing some levity to the tightly-wound Nike chief, and allowing fans the pleasure of seeing him act again with his longtime buddy Damon (the two have now appeared in nine films together, if you’re curious). Affleck wisely doesn’t cast an actor to play the young Michael Jordan in a speaking role – – only a few scenes use the actor (Damian Young), and they are shot from behind. Instead, Affleck includes clips of the real MJ both on and off the court, effectively reminding us that Sonny’s gamble was dead on, as Jordan would go on to become one of the best athletes and most admired figures in the world.
Affleck’s other inspired casting idea was to convince Academy Award winner Viola Davis to take the role of Jordan’s no-nonsense, business savvy mother Deloris. Her knowledge of her son’s worth is deeply ingrained, and she won’t stand for it to be undervalued. Deloris goes toe-to-toe with Sonny, who, in one of the film’s best scenes, is expecting a quick acceptance of what he considers a generous offer for Jordan. But Davis’s Deloris, measured, calm, and exhibiting more business acumen than any of the Nike execs, throws Sonny off his game with a request that would go on to become a sports marketing standard. Yes, it’s only early April, but I’m making my first 2024 Oscar prediction: Davis will be nominated for this role.
If all that still isn’t enough to get you to see this gem of a picture, here’s one last selling point: the soundtrack is just as delightful as the movie. Gen X’ers especially will revel in the well placed early 80’s hits: REO Speedwagon, Mike & the Mechanics, the Violent Femmes, Cyndi Lauper and Bruce Springsteen all get some play (and Jason Bateman, at his sardonic best as marketing director Rob Strasser, even gets to deliver a prescient analysis of Born in the USA). But of course the song that closes out the picture is one that all generations will recognize: Be Like Mike.
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Air opens today at Bay Area theaters.
