This movie has only been out for about nine months, but it feels like it has eluded me for much longer. Air was released in theaters on April 5, 2023, one week before I decided to watch through every Matt Damon movie in chronological order. I had been wanting to watch it since it came out, but wanted to have the full experience of watching it with fresh eyes for the career retrospective – so I saved it. The only issue with this is, I wish I hadn’t. For whatever reason, this movie just felt like the perfect “go see it in the theaters” kind of movie – with a tub of popcorn in my lap and a fifty-foot screen in front of me. All that being said, I am so happy to have finally seen this movie, and it did not disappoint!
Air comes to us as the most recent collaboration between Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, following up on their 2021 epic, The Last Duel1. Previous to that, they actually hadn’t worked together (co-starring, co-writing or co-producing) since 1999’s Dogma – but it was a welcome sight. Anytime Phil Knight and Sonny Vaccaro shared the screen, their chemistry was electric. Owing to many conversations and situations they probably had throughout their lifelong friendship, they are able to deliver the Sorkin-esque dialogue with a sincerity that is hard to accomplish. Affleck’s portrayal of the awkwardly brazen Nike CEO was fun to watch, but it is his directing of the film that really stands out. He is able to achieve a pacing that feels up-tempo and communicates the urgency to which Nike is trying to sign Michael Jordan, without bulldozing over any details or giving the viewer whiplash from all the quick-cuts or fast dialogue that can oftentimes lose people. We are basically just being taken from one conversation to the next, one meeting after another. There’s no real action or “juice” to the movie, which allows the actors to flex their muscles in keeping your attention through two hours of people just talking to each other.
Let’s talk about that for a second – because some people will watch this movie and find it to be boring. Similar to movies like Oppenheimer, 12 Angry Men, or Moneyball, the vast majority of the film revolves around men talking to each other. This can sometimes lead to monologues or sequences being overdone, or force the scene to rely too heavily on a needle drop to make it worthwhile.2 One of my only gripes (there’s really only two) with this movie is the sheer amount of needle drops – it felt like sometimes we were only five seconds into a song before another one was already coming in. It was a little in my face, saying “HEY DON’T FORGET THIS HAPPENED IN THE 80s. DID YOU KNOW IT WAS THE 80s? HERE’S ANOTHER SONG FROM THE 80s.” Relax, we get it. That being said, I didn’t find this to be boring – and that is a testament not only to the script, but to Affleck’s direction. We all knew the outcome before even watching the movie – everyone has owned, or known someone who has owned, a pair of Air Jordan’s. We all knew who Michael Jordan turned out to be. And yet, there I was, wondering how in the world Sonny was going to out-pitch Adidas, Michael Jordan’s personal choice for not only shoes, but apparel as well. This is the kind of suspended disbelief that I live for – I know who this is about, I know what he became, and I know exactly what shoe brand he signs with (I even owned a pair of Jordan 1s in high school), but they still had me guessing. Kudos all around.
Let’s go ahead and get my other gripe out of the way, since I don’t like to focus too much on the negatives of the movies I write about. Michael Jordan…where was he the whole time?? I certainly was not expecting Jordan to get the Wilson from Home Improvement treatment in a movie based entirely on his name, likeness, image and brand! It was such a weird choice, that not only confused me the whole time, but also distracted me in every scene he was in. They worked so hard to never show his face that it made you think there was either going to be some grand reveal of it at some point, or you made a game out of it trying to figure out how they were going to hide his face the next time. I did some research, and Affleck’s reasoning behind the decision wasn’t terrible, but I still didn’t love it. “He exists above and around the story, but if you ever concretize him, if you ever say, ‘Yes, that’s Michael Jordan,’ we know it’s not, really. It’s fake.” Okay, but like, so is every other character in this movie? We know it’s not really Phil Knight, or James Jordan, or David Falk in the movie. That’s…how acting works? I don’t know, I just think it ends up achieving the opposite effect as to what he was going for. If you were worried about the actor not looking enough like him, might I suggest hiring current NBA start Anthony Edwards for the role?3
One thing that this movie did teach me though, is that I am turning into my father. This isn’t a specific reference to my actual father, but more so to the proverbial sense of “I’m turning into my parents” kind of thing. Like, this movie’s climax is a business meeting for a shoe deal. It’s not a huge action scene, or a car chase, or the suspenseful revelation of a courtroom verdict. It’s a couple of guys pitching their lowly brand to an apathetic Michael Jordan, ending without us even getting his final decision. I think most millennials reading this can picture their dad coming up to them and saying, “Did you see that new movie about Michael Jordan? Aww man, it was so good! Did you know, Nike’s basketball department was actually doing really poorly back then?” And here I am, saying the same thing to my partner after watching the movie.
One more thing to note about this movie, is it’s accuracy. Lucky for us, Ben Affleck had the forethought to get a meeting with Michael to not only get his blessing for the movie, but to have a consultation with him around the story as a whole. There were a few changes that Michael requested, lending to the historical accuracy of how Michael felt during the real-life courting process from Nike, Converse, and Adidas. Jordan asked for George Raveling to be added to the movie, stating that he was the first person to suggest to Michael that he sign with Nike – he was Michael’s assistant coach on the 1984 Olympic team, and would be played by Marlon Wayans. Jordan also asked Affleck to add Howard White to the movie, who is a close personal friend of Michael’s – he ended up becoming the VP of the Jordan brand, and would be played by Chris Tucker. He would then go on to request that the Tinker Hatfield character be removed from the film, as he didn’t join the Air Jordan shoe production until 1985. Finally, he asked that the roles of his parents be extended – specifically that of his mother. “None of this would have ever happened without my mother,” Michael said to Affleck in their face-to-face meeting. Jordan even made the specific request to have Viola Davis play Deloris Jordan, a request that Davis herself didn’t know about until the premiere of the movie!4
With that being said, let’s head to the categories!
By the Numbers
- Budget: $70-90 million
- Box office: $90.1 million
- Run time: 112 minutes (1 hour, 52 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 3.6 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.0 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 93% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – 32 total nominations, five total wins
- Two Golden Globe nominations, zero wins
- Six Hollywood Critics Association Midseason Film Awards nominations, two wins (Best Actor – Matt Damon, Best Supporting Actress – Viola Davis)
Best Scene
This is a fun category, given that there aren’t any scenes with heart-pumping action or a knock-your-socks-off dramatic scene like when Tom Cruise tells Jack Nicholson that he wants the truth. That being said, there are still some really fun scenes in this movie, including some solid speeches/monologues from Viola Davis and Matt Damon. Honorable mentions go to: Sonny and Deloris negotiating whether or not Michael can get a revenue share of his own shoes, Sonny going off the script in Nike’s pitch to Jordan, and the scene where the team is deciding which prospects to go after – this one is great just to see how right and wrong not only Nike was about some of these players, but the NBA teams who drafted them as well. But the winner, maybe unsurprising to those who know me, is the scene where David Falk finds out that Sonny went to the Jordan household in North Carolina. We get basically three uninterrupted minutes of Chris Messina, playing Jordan’s agent, just absolutely ripping into Sonny for going behind his back – and Sonny just does not care. I can’t tell if Damon or Messina is funnier in this scene, but I was cracking up the entire time. It’s basically the one time in the entire movie that they let the actors turn it up to eleven, and it is worth every decibel.
What’s Aged the Best
This category is a little difficult to call, because the entire story is basically about a bunch of decisions that couldn’t have aged better. Sonny betting his career on Michael Jordan, Phil Knight making the groundbreaking decision to give Jordan a revenue share on the shoes, MJ deciding to go with Nike over Adidas, David Falk giving Nike a meeting with His Airness – they’ve all aged to perfection. But the one thing that has aged better than all of those, is the design for the shoe that Peter Moore came up with. It is a true thing of beauty. And not only that, but the Air Jordan logo itself, which was also designed and created by Peter Moore. Oh, and the name “Air Jordan” was also his idea. So, he kinda crushed it. Thanks Peter!
What’s Aged the Worst
We can get trivial, and say that the Rockets taking Hakeem with the first overall pick didn’t age well, or Adidas and Converse not creating a specific shoe design for Michael was a bad choice. But those are choices that are more of a “hindsight is 20/20” kinda thing, where you can’t really blame them for making those decisions. Instead, I think the thing that has aged the worst, by far, was the decision by Affleck to not ever show Michael Jordan’s face. We’ve already covered this, but it really takes away from the experience for me, much more so than them choosing to show an actor who, admittedly, is not Michael Jordan. They just make it so obvious that we’re not supposed to see his face that you’re spending all of his scenes trying to see if the cameraman messed up and we catch a glimpse of one of his eyebrows. It’s okay Ben, we know that it isn’t actually Michael Jordan!
The Jason Clarke Award (What’s Their Name Again?)
We all obviously know Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Jason Bateman and Viola Davis are easily recognizable as well, but then we start to get into high-quality “that guy” territory. There’s Matthew Maher, who plays Peter Moore (designer of the Air Jordan shoe) – you probably know him from Our Flag Means Death, Hello Tomorrow!, Dogma, or his voice acting in Grand Theft Auto V. He doesn’t have a lot of prominent roles, though, so I’m instead going to give this one to Chris Messina. The character of David Falk, Michael’s agent, is pretty crucial to this story, so they had to get the right guy to play it. At the same time though, this is an agent we’re talking about, not the CEO of Nike, so you don’t want to over produce here with someone the likes of a Brad Pitt or a Tom Cruise in this role. I think they nailed it with Chris Messina – you probably recognize him from his roles in The Sinner, Birds of Prey, Sharp Objects, The Mindy Project, or Argo. Or, like me, you remember him from his time playing Reese Lansing on The Newsroom. He’s quite good at playing the high-ranking douchebag character, and he brought all of that energy to Air, and nailed it. You immediately don’t like him, you want Michael to sign with Nike just to spite him, but you also know he’s really good at his job. Great job, Chris!
The Jack Nicholson Award (Big Impact, Small Role)
I’m gonna go ahead and disqualify Viola Davis and Jason Bateman from this, since they both had fairly prominent screen time throughout the movie. That leaves us with a few choices: Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, Chris Tucker as Howard White, Asanté Deshon as the 7-Eleven clerk, and Marlon Wayans as George Raveling. As much as I loved Chris Tucker’s (slightly bizarre) performance as the Nike VP, I have to give this one to Marlon Wayans. He comes in, has a quick five minute scene, and is never seen again. But, his impact in both that scene, and in the story of the remainder of the film, loom large. He is the well-spoken, charming, trustworthy friend that Sonny goes to in a time of confusion, and gets exactly what he needs: a pep talk that is inspiring, but doesn’t lead him either direction. In the vacuum of the movie though, his impact couldn’t have been larger. His story to Sonny about Martin Luther King, Jr. having improvised the second half of his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” leads Sonny to cut the Nike presentation video short, having realized that he was quickly losing MJ’s interest. He pivots, and improvises an awesome speech that includes the epic line, “A shoe is just a shoe, until someone steps into it – then it has meaning.” Sonny doesn’t take that risk if he doesn’t have that beer with George.
The Roger Deakins Award (Best Cinematography)
I gotta be honest – there is no one scene or shot that I can really point to here for this category. Robert Richardson reprises his role as Cinematographer for Ben Affleck after their collaboration on Live By Night. You probably know him more for his work on JFK, The Aviator, Platoon, A Few Good Men, Shutter Island, and Django Unchained. The thing about this movie, similar to A Few Good Men, is that there are a lot of indoor talking scenes, so we aren’t getting the more traditionally “beautiful” cinematography of a sprawling landscape, or an innovative tracking shot. Instead, we are treated to the little things, which a lot of people may not even notice: the framing of Phil Knight as he runs up the stairs in Nike HQ, the lighting in Peter Moore’s office as they look at blueprints for the Air Jordan I, or apropos to this being a Ben Affleck movie, a good ol’ helicopter shot of the Beaverton woods surrounding Nike HQ. It’s hard to pinpoint one thing in particular, so instead we will just give this award to “the little things.”
Conclusion
All in all, I really enjoyed watching this movie. The acting was really good, the dialogue was witty, the directing was on point, and the story sold itself. Air, similar to movies like Moneyball or Ford v Ferrari, stands out as not needing the viewer to be a die hard fan of the sport in order to enjoy the movie. Heck, it might even make the viewing experience more enjoyable than not, since you would truly not know how the story ends! This will definitely be added to my “easily rewatchable” list, when you just want a low-stakes, funny, feel-good movie to watch on a rainy day.
- Shameless plug, go check out my review for that movie! https://letterboxd.com/jgravey/film/the-last-duel-2021/ ↩︎
- I’m looking at you, The Newsroom. The show was created and written by Aaron Sorkin, whose scripts can sometimes come under criticism for being too wordy or too soap-boxy. There’s a specific scene, where the dialogue alone wasn’t getting the job done, so they relied on an incredibly cheesy (and poorly done) needle drop from Coldplay. Watch for yourself and try not to cringe. ↩︎
- I mean, come on. Look at this.
↩︎ - https://www.avclub.com/michael-jordan-air-viola-davis-1850241565 ↩︎
