Nike’s Air Jordan is the most successful shoe line of all time. It makes Nike billions of dollars a year, and nets Michael Jordan himself millions of dollars in passive income. But despite recognizing Michael Jordan’s extraordinary talent from early on, no one foresaw Air Jordans when Michael Jordan was a rookie in the NBA.
According to the movie Air, the Air Jordan wouldn’t have happened without the vision of two people: Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) of Nike’s basketball division, and Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris (Viola Davis).
As usual, the spoiler warning, even though, as this is a movie about historical events, you already have a very good idea of where the movie ends up. Specifically, you already know who signs with what company. Still, I’m going to try to give a very detailed summary of the first act, mention the second act a little bit and limit what I write about the third act.
What might truly be new information to you occurs early on in the movie. Maybe you already had some awareness that endorsement deals weren’t as lucrative back then, back when Michael Jordan played for the North Carolina Tar Heels, as they are now. It was possible to be a very famous athlete but not be much better off financially than if you had been less well known in some other field.
The movie starts with Nike’s basketball division on the brink of getting closed down. The best hope seems to be getting three of the draft picks below the top five to sign, splitting $250,000 among them. It’s what Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) insists on. That seems to be a recipe for failure.
Sonny Vaccaro wants Nike to sign Michael Jordan and give him alone the full $250,000. But there are several obstacles to that. Michael Jordan himself seems to not like Nike, and everyone predicts he will sign with Adidas or Converse instead, companies that have bigger budgets for endorsement deals.
Add in that Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), has expressly forbidden Sonny to call the Jordan family. Also, Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), formerly a risk taker who sold track shoes out of his van, has become unwilling to do anything that might upset the company’s board of directors, much less shake up the status quo of how endorsement deals are made with professional athletes.
Sonny does not really care about angering David Falk, in fact he relishes antagonizing the arrogant bastard. Getting through to Phil Knight might be the bigger challenge for Sonny.
Actually designing the shoe is the least of Sonny’s worries. Despite his short stature, or maybe because of it, shoe designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) is obsessed with creating the perfect basketball shoe. Designing a shoe for Michael Jordan might just be the chance he’s been waiting for.
Air is ostensibly a sports movie. But really, it’s more of a business movie, telling the story of an unprecedented endorsement contract. And that, to me, is way more interesting than whether a given sports team wins a championship or not.
It’s a good movie, but I don’t entirely like the visual style. Ben Affleck as an actor thoroughly becomes the character he plays in a particular movie, but as a director he seems to not be able to decide whether he wants to be Michael Bay or Robert Bresson. This story would have been better served by the latter.
Still, you have to give Affleck credit for consulting with Michael Jordan at every step of the way. Asked who should play his mother, the basketball legend suggested acting legend Viola Davis. In response to that casting choice, screenwriter Alex Convery increased Deloris Jordan’s lines from just two or three in the first draft of the screenplay to a major presence in the final shooting script.
I give the movie ★★★★☆. Although it is not unusual for DVDs to not include special features these days, I still deduct a full star for this omission, so I give the DVD ★★★☆☆.
Air is rated R “for language throughout.” If it had been up to me, it would have only been PG-13. The movie runs 1 hour and 51 minutes, but it doesn’t feel long.