Ben Affleck reteams with Matt Damon, directing and starring in this true story of Nike’s mission to sign Michael Jordan in the mid-80s. Air showcases some of Affleck and Damon’s best work to date, says Cat Woods, alongside standout performances from Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans and Chris Messina.
Air (2023)
“It’s just a shoe…until my son steps into it.”
By the time Deloris Jordan, portrayed flawlessly by Viola Davis, utters this line as her closing argument on the most historic sports marketing deal in history, Nike’s key executives have put their business and personal reputations on the line.
Davis’s performance as the protective, eagle-eyed mother who can see the phenomenal potential of her son, Michael Jordan, is one of the standouts in a movie that showcases some of the best work by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman and Chris Messina to date.
When Michael Jordan signed to Nike in 1984, it was a deal that took years of negotiating, unprecedented sums of money, and a pioneering plan that encompassed fashion, sports and advertising. It was all captained by one man: Sonny Vaccaro.
Accomplished director, producer and actor Ben Affleck’s Air relates the story of a lowly Nike employee (Vaccaro) trying to convince basketball star Michael Jordan to sign onto a business deal when competing brands Converse and adidas have achieved superiority in the burgeoning sneaker, basketball and commercial sports market.
For an audience that grew up with Nike Air Jordans, the story of how such a fashion icon came to be is fascinating. And there’s a romantic nostalgia to this era of the sporting business, before online gambling and liquor ads overwhelmed fans of any sport.
Affleck has an affinity with true stories through the dramatic lens of a screenwriter’s largesse. Argo (2012) was an exaggerated account of a CIA exfiltration specialist pretending to be a major Hollywood producer in order to secure the release of six Americans held captive in Tehran. As the CIA operative Tony Mendez, Affleck was charming, ridiculous and thrilling. Like the stellar lineup he’s assembled for Air, his Argo casting was the crème de la crème of versatile comedy-drama veterans: George Clooney, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin.
In Air’s Bateman, Damon, Messina—and Marlon Wayans particularly—Affleck has chosen actors who can deliver dramatic work with gravitas as believably and impressively as they deliver poker-faced, dark comedic one-liners. That versatility is explored in the tale of a bunch of paunchy, middle-aged sports marketing executives working in Nike’s bland, open-plan office littered with 1980s paraphernalia (dial phones, ancient Apple Macs, Rubik’s cubes, cassettes and VHS tapes).
The question of how one singular courageous, seemingly ridiculous risk can have immense, unforeseen ramifications for individuals and entire communities immediately and for generations to come is a preoccupation of Affleck’s movies.
His 2010 film The Town, based on the book Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, depicted a bunch of ordinary, unspectacular men whose lives are irreversibly altered by choosing to undertake a reckless, deadly bank robbery. In Live By Night (2016), Affleck is the bootlegger-cum-major gangster. All it takes is one twist of fate—one act—to change the trajectory of an underdog’s life into something historic.
Befittingly, both Phil Knight (Affleck) and Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) are ordinary middle-aged men, flailing for relevance in the sports marketing world where adidas and Converse are seen as the cool, aspirational brands that appeal beyond the sporting field and into everyday fashion statements. It’s the mid-1980s and nobody is wearing Nike beyond the running track. Damon’s Vaccaro pays obsessive attention to high school basketball games and the players with potential, which has won him a job advising Nike—but the publicly-listed company is on the brink of shutting down its basketball division since it isn’t showing the Nike board impressive returns on its meagre investments.
Michael Jordan is the key to their fortunes, Vaccaro is convinced. As the slick, smarmy, swearing sports agent David Falk, Messina delivers a scathing, sneering refute to Vaccaro’s initial pleas for a meeting. It’s clear that Nike holds no sway with Michael nor his agent.
What Nike lacks in financial competitiveness, Vaccaro is confident they can counter with an incomparable offer: a whole line of shoes and athletic wear modelled on Michael Jordan. It’s a crazy idea, and Knight is dubious, but Vaccaro is given the green light to facilitate a meeting, to make an offer, and to present Michael Jordan with the prototype of the (literally rule-breaking) Nike Air Jordan shoe.
Damon’s every wrinkle, puffy face, paunchy belly and jowls are emphasised in unforgiving close-ups. As Vaccaro, he’s entirely unremarkable except for his determined, unfaltering goal to sign Jordan. Affleck’s barefoot, Buddhist-quoting CEO is frequently hilarious without overplaying the gags. Bateman plays the straight man, the perfect foil for both Affleck and Damon to garner all the guffaws.
That we barely see Jordan other than in silhouette or glimpses is telling: this is not the story of Michael Jordan, but the everyday, unspectacular men who collectively made him a multi-millionaire legend in only a couple of years. And the woman who negotiated a landmark deal, Deloris Jordan.
Air is funny, deeply human, beautifully paced and believable. As someone with a glancing knowledge of basketball, I was emotionally invested in Vaccaro’s quest and the genuine camaraderie between Knight, Vaccaro, Howard White (Chris Tucker) and Bateman’s Rob Strasser.
“Every once in a while, someone comes along that’s so extraordinary that it forces change because they are so very special,” Deloris Jordan tells Vaccaro as a Jordan-Nike deal hangs on the line.
In its no-frills, good old-fashioned storytelling and strong dialogue with a focus on characters, Air is not extraordinary, but it too is very special. It deserves to be seen as proof of Affleck’s masterful versatility as a director, writer and producer.
