This latest Matt Damon/Ben Affleck collab is a star-studded behind-the-scenes dramatization of one of the other great collabs of the 20th century: Nike shoes and Michael Jordan. Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, a basketball talent scout for the failing Nike, Inc. in 1984. With the threat of Nike scrapping the whole basketball department looming, Vaccaro sets out to nab the NBA draft third pick (and notorious Addidas lover) Michael Jordan as Nike's representative. It's a risky move, as it will take the entire marketing budget meant to be split between three less-prestigious players and requires approval from Nike CEO Phil Knight (played by Affleck, who also directs the film).
Vaccaro proves tenacious, pulling in the head of marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and shoe designer Peter Moor (Matthew Maher) to concoct a totally revolutionary scheme to build a shoe around the concept of Michael Jordan. This line of shoes would ultimately become the Air Jordan line which would go on to gross $162 million in sales during its first year of release alone. Along the way, Vaccaro contends with Michael's foul-mouthed agent (Chris Messina) and forms an unlikely alliance with Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), Michael's mother and commander-in-chief of the future basketball star's game plan.
The dialogue is fairly strong, peppering what should be a boring account of business meetings and phone calls with clever, decently-paced office banter. From the get-go, audiences are saturated with 1980s imagery and songs, which does a decent chunk of the world-building. I felt that I had been placed sufficiently in the time of the film, but the characters lacked enough depth to ground me in the story. Sonny is the typical underdog we've seen time and time again, sniffing out what others can't and always in peril of losing his job. The only deviation from the formula is that this misunderstood corporate free-thinker doesn't have a wife and kids in the picture to add pressure from all sides. Instead, we seem to enter after the wife and kids have left, leaving Vacarro to sit and watch basketball tapes over (and over and over and over and over) on his recliner chair with groceries purchased at the 7-Eleven.
Unfortunately, that's not to say that the general wife-and-kids trope isn't used to try to up the ante. During the all-weekend leadup to Michael Jordan's Nike visit, Rob Strasser confides to Vacarro that he needs this deal to work because free Nike shoes are the only thing keeping him connected to his daughter post-divorce. While it does mean you can cross off a space on your underdog corporate movie bingo sheet, it did not raise the stakes in any meaningful way. But, how high can the stakes really be when the outcome of the movie is known to everyone who sets foot in the theater?
The crucial issue with Air is exactly that. Instead of asking, "How did Nike make this shoe?" this movie asks, "Will Jordan sign on and save Nike?"
We all know he does. We all know Nike doesn't go out of business. In fact, Nike was the world's 13th most valuable brand in 2022.
Other corporate-driven, based-on-a-true-story movies like Ford Vs Ferrari or even The Social Network are able to maintain tension and interest because there are smaller outcomes that are surprising. Nothing about Air was unexpected or surprising. Or, rather, the surprising parts for me came in the beginning: I had no idea that Nike was based in Oregon or that Michael Jordan was originally an Addidas fan.
Perhaps there would have been more interest built if the story had been shuffled out of chronological order, leading the audience with the phone call that Addidas matched Nike's original bid. Or, maybe the focus needed to be shifted, following Michael and Deloris more closely outside of their meetings with other shoe companies to give insight into how much of a change of heart truly occurred or following the shoemaker to give insight into the background process and difficult task of designing the entire shoe line in just one weekend.
Another odd choice, though intentional, is that Michael Jordan (played by Damian Delano Young) was written as just a side character, benched for the entirety of the film. Vaccaro speaks to him only once at the end of the film and that conversation was over the phone with the camera trained tightly on Vaccaro. Most of the shots including Michael Jordan show his back, leaving him to loom over the characters and forcing the camera to break the fourth wall and say "This is someone important and you can fill in the gaps yourself."
I imagine this is what The West Wing would have felt like if Aaron Sorkin's original plan of having President Bartlett be a recurring figure who just dropped in every now and again had pulled through. I think, after seeing the effect in Air, Sorkin is lucky they changed it.
There's no question this is a bro-y movie. The very first business meeting is interrupted when Jason Bateman's character walks out saying he needs to "take a shit." Damon's character meets him in the bathroom and they have a conversation that's far more productive than the actual meeting. Nothing says "boy's club" like moving the meeting to the literal men's room. The two (?) women working for Nike that have lines are secretaries. The only female executive shown worked for Addidas and is Adi Dassler's (the founder of Addidas) widow. The '80s, right?
That said, I did appreciate that they never strayed into Wolf of Wall Street sleaze. We might not have passed the Bechdel test, but we also didn't have a bunch of middle-aged corporate scumbags slobbering over a twenty-something secretary. And the power attributed to Deloris Jordan can't be overstated. Michael's agent might have been the gateway to the Jordan Family Team but Deloris is clearly calling the shots. In a movie all about impromptu speeches and business meetings, Deloris comes out as successful as—if not more successful than—Sonny Vacarro, and Nike at large.
Nike might be raking in profits, but Deloris ensures her son gets a percentage of every pair of Air Jordans sold in perpetuity. Sonny keeps Nike going but doesn't come close to the personal gain that Deloris secures for her son and family. Viola Davis gives the most compelling performance of the film and without saying the words explicitly, seems to address the issue of a predominantly white company profiting immensely off the back of a young Black man. In addition to being a personal success, the movie clearly positions Jordan's win as a win for all Black people against a system that historically profits off of them with little payout in return.
The rest of the cast, while not matching Davis' gravitas, was well cast. Matt Damon is down-to-earth and likable enough to pull off the Maverick role without coming across as weird or arrogant. There were several jokes about his character being old and fat, including a final scene where he begins to jog and goes about five seconds before saying, "Fuck that." This certainly isn't his most physically fit role but he's still Matt Damon so that all felt a little over the top and disingenuous. Jason Bateman, in a wig that looked plucked off of Bruce McCulloch's head in Dick, nails the dry, witty repartee as only Bateman can. I did feel that historical accuracy be damned, his hard-to-sell character was redundant when we had the naysaying Phil Knight also in the mix. Ben Affleck's Knight is odd but doesn't make enough of an appearance to overshadow any of the main characters. His rapport with Matt Damon contextualizes their characters' relationship and changing dynamic easily and effectively. Chris Messina is a stand-out as Michael Jordan's agent, spewing profanities and threats convincingly but without ever becoming unlikeable. If this were a Marvel movie, the end credits scene would be him screaming more shit into his phone with some big-name cameo on the other end.
I would have loved to see more of Matthew Maher's character, who came across as delightfully eccentric, and more of the character of Michael Jordan.
All in all, this movie was fine technically. The performances were good, the shots were crisp, and the editing was smooth but they just played it too safe. In terms of storytelling, I think it failed to find its "in" and thus failed to tell a compelling story.
2.5 stars out of 5.
End Credits: 2/5
Soundtrack: 3.5/5
Accurate review! Can't believe this movie is getting so much hype.