Movie Reaction: Air

Formula: Hustle - the basketball

The thing about Air is that I wanted to love it. All the pieces are there. Ben Affleck is directing and in a showy supporting role. Affleck and Matt Damon are on screen together a lot. The rest of the cast is a bunch of familiar faces I like, such as Viola Davis, Chris Messina, and Jason Bateman. I like how super specific the story is. It's entirely about the Nike pitch that convinced Michael Jordan to sign with them. Those unseen stories tend to be fertile ground for entertainment. There's even a fun gimmick in that it's a Michael Jordan story without Michael Jordan in it. This looked like a great "People doing their damn jobs" movie. Spotlight remains my gold standard of this. I like a process movie about people who are good at their job overcoming an obstacle.

And I did like the movie. I just thought I'd like it more.

When I break it down, I think the issue is that the movie never sells me on the stakes. I'm fine with a movie being about professional stakes rather than life-and-death stakes. I have no problem investing in the plight of the bankers in Margin Call, for example. Air is presented as an underdog story: how lowly Nike became the dominant force in the basketball shoe market. From the beginning of the movie though, they point out that Nike had a 17% market share. 3rd place. And the company was doing great in other places. Even without the success of the Air Jordan, Nike would've been fine. Likely still around now. Phil Knight would still be incredibly wealthy. It then has to convince me that the Air Jordan was as big a bet as it was in the industry. I know it actually was a big swing to make that deal with the third pick in the draft in a league dominated by bigs. For me, the movie never fully convinces me that getting the Jordan deal was more "hawkish move" than "lucky break". Finally, the most impactful aspect of the deal is treated like an afterthought. The thing that made this deal so legendary was Jordan's profit share on the sales, which single-handedly has made him a billionaire.

All that said, Air is functional in all the ways it needs to be. It's got a lot of actors spinning gold out of sometimes questionable material. There's a Jason Bateman speech about his daughter that sticks out in that respect. And I'll leave room in my opinion that I may be too close to this topic. I know all about that NBA draft and season, so maybe a part of me expected even more depth on the topics in the movie. I guess I'll just have to wait another 20 years for them to try this again with the story of Lebron's Kia deal.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend