Air movie review: Like Michael Jordan himself, Ben Affleck’s sports drama is nimble, fast, and a joy to watch

Down on his luck and with pressure from the top slowly mounting, Sonny sits down one evening to watch a clip of a teenage Jordan playing a high school match. What he discovers almost knocks him out of his chair. While virtually every pundit and expert had already written Jordan off as being too slight to have a future in the NBA, Sonny — at least according to the film — was the only one to notice his once-in-a-generation talent. Convinced that he’s cracked it, he pushes Phil Knight to let him pursue the possibility of signing Jordan to Nike in a landmark deal that would alter the course of the business (and culture) forever.

Air is basically the Lincoln of glossy sports dramas — a movie that focuses on a very specific moment in history, while also giving the impression that its characters have had a past, and will probably experience other adventures together in the future. It’s the sort of movie in which top-notch actors drop by to play bit parts with the sincerity and professionalism that they’d probably bring to playing Shakespeare. The smarmy sports agent played by Chris Messina, for instance, exists purely to create obstacles in the path of our protagonist — like the Jon Hamm character in Top Gun: Maverick. Air is also the sort of movie in which people have brainwaves, and instead of picking up the phone and telling someone that they’ve solved all their problems, they storm into an office and deliver a rousing speech. Because that’s more fun to watch than a phone call.

The eureka moment in this case is Sonny spotting Jordan’s greatness when nobody else could. And so, he barges into the Nike headquarters the next day and passionately lays out his plans. He gets pushback initially; Jordan is hardly on anybody’s radar, and to splurge the kind of money on him that Sonny wants to seems careless at best, and foolish at worst. But this is exactly how Affleck, who has directed only one bad film in his career, adds another dimension to a story that could otherwise have come across as a celebration of greed. Along with rookie writer Alex Convery, Affleck cleverly makes the chase for cheddar the secondary conflict in the film. First and foremost, Air is a sports drama about championing true talent — Jordan on the court and Sonny in the conference rooms.

Early in the film, he’s described as “a basketball guru, a wizard who goes to a lot of high school tournaments.” Sonny isn’t unlike a scout, the only difference is that he’s trying to sign players for a corporation, and not a team. It helps that he approaches this mission from a place of purity. He isn’t doing this because he wants to make somebody else rich, but because he truly believes in Jordan — his potential marketability, yes, but also his athletic talent.

And what a joy it is to see Damon in these everyman roles. Watching him and Affleck spar on screen offers more nostalgia than any glimpse of Michael Keaton in a Batman suit ever could. They don’t have too many scenes together, but when they do, it’s like taking a time machine to the mid-90s and watching Damon scream about apples. As precise as Affleck’s direction is, Damon’s performance plays a major role in convincing you that Nike — a company now valued at over $30 billion — is somehow the underdog. This isn’t a biopic, where you’d be interested in seeing how a bullied nerd eventually became either rich, or powerful, or both. Divorcing Nike’s current domination from the past is key to enjoying this movie in a non-cynical manner.

Because Air is a deeply uncynical movie. Somewhat tellingly, the first film you’d probably be reminded of while watching it is Jerry Maguire. In fact, some of the film’s most earnest moments seem to be ripped straight out of another Cameron Crowe drama, We Bought a Zoo, which, incidentally, also starred Damon as a regular person trying to get by on sincerity alone. It’s a testament to his effortless ability to get the audience on his side that in a conversation with Viola Davis, who plays Jordan’s mother, she comes across as the more calculating of the two. Like the GOAT himself, Air is nimble on its feet, deceptively slight, and blessed with an ability to up its game at crunch time.

Air
Director – Ben Affleck
Cast – Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina
Rating – 4/5