There’s a scene early on in Air that should give you a sense of the movie’s themes. Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) — at the moment we meet him, a low-level talent scout at Nike — is trying to get a point across about going after potential superstars to a group of unenthused co-workers who he later says don’t “deserve a seat at the table.” In this early scene, we see exactly why they don’t deserve a seat. Sonny is the most proactive of any of his peers. He understands and loves the game of basketball much more deeply than them, and he’s not focused on presenting a nice image to the exclusion of thinking big. It’s reminiscent of the scene in Bennett Miller’s Moneyball in which Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane realizes why antiquated scouting processes are so antiquated.
With both films, many of us already know the outcomes — Vaccaro was instrumental to Nike signing Michael Jordan, and Beane introduced sabermetrics to the Oakland Athletics and turned the team around. The entertainment value in both cases is watching as new ways of thinking combat the old. When you have great writing, directing, and acting, the backroom dealings of sports can often be more entertaining than any fictional game. Yes, Air is a movie about the shoes known as Air Jordans. Yes, it does sometimes feel like a bit of reputation-laundering for Nike. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wildly entertained by this particular story and this particular telling of it.
Damon is in rare form here. He’s one of those actors that I often have difficulty seeing as the character he’s playing apart from himself. In Air, Damon sinks his teeth into a role which allows him to feast on the film’s built-in entertainment value I mentioned previously, and thus he sinks into the role of Vaccaro with ease. His passion to make the Jordan deal mirrors the film’s feeling of escalation as the formal offer approaches. Crucially, Vaccaro isn’t a wild man. He’s not screaming at the top of his lungs; he’s not breaking things; he’s not cursing up a storm. There’s a sense that even with his lofty aspirations, he fits into the relatively down-to-earth corporate culture of pre-Jordan Nike.
By virtue of Vaccaro’s real-life connection with Nike co-founder and then-CEO Phil Knight, Damon gets several scenes opposite his buddy Ben Affleck as Knight (Affleck also directed this film). Their early moments deliver a few morsels of necessary exposition about Knight’s pressures against his board of directors after having taken the company public, along with some backstory about Vaccaro’s accomplishments in the basketball world outside of Nike. It’s a clever way to deliver this information, especially since Damon and Affleck’s chemistry — dramatically and comedically — is as robust as ever. Plus, this comedic chemistry leads to a hilarious moment during the final offer to Jordan. I don’t know if that moment in particular actually occurred in real life, but it’s very funny nonetheless.
The secondary supporting players are all bringing their best to this as well. Jason Bateman gets to emphasize his special brand of deadpan comedy as Vaccaro’s colleague Rob Strasser, and Chris Tucker chews the scenery in perhaps a more subdued way than we’ve seen him do before as Howard White, another Vaccaro colleague and eventual vice president of Nike’s Jordan brand. Chris Messina shares the film’s funniest scene as David Falk, Jordan’s slick, fast-talking agent.
For as great as the entire cast is, Viola Davis is the most valuable player of the film, as she often is. She plays Deloris Jordan, Michael’s mother, a casting choice Michael himself suggested. I had been quizzical as to why the film shows so little of Michael during the process of signing with Nike, but knowing that Michael gave the project his blessing, I can let that go. As with a great many things, Michael was right on the money with the choice of Davis. While not as flashy as some of her most famous and iconic performances, there’s a grace and a quiet strength to her work here that elevates the entire film. That grace also lends itself to immense credibility when Deloris speaks with Vaccaro about seeing in Michael the potential to change the sport of basketball.
Affleck’s direction is spot-on throughout. While maybe hitting the point just a tad too often, he does a nice job of establishing the film as a late-80s period piece. He also keeps the pace fairly quick while not sacrificing any major details or ideas he seemed to want to communicate. For a drama, it feels like as full a meal as we could expect from Hollywood before the summer season. Air is a delightful breeze with artful undercurrents. | George Napper
