“We need you in these shoes,” Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro says in an impassioned plea to a young NBA draft prospect named Michael Jordan. “Not to have meaning in your life, but so we can have meaning in ours.”
This impassioned speech is exactly where “Air,” Ben Affleck’s return to the directorial chair, carves its dramatic thesis — an enthralling sports office drama and modern capitalist parable all in one.
The film chronicles the 1984 creation of the Air Jordan sneaker and Nike’s tireless pursuit to sign future NBA draft pick Michael Jordan, fending off the competitive offers of Converse and Adidas in the process.
While seemingly quaint in design, Affleck and his marvelous cast — from the oft-reliable Damon, to the hilarious Jason Bateman, to the scene-stealing Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother — transform the world of backdoor sports merchandising into the substance of a dramatic thrill ride.
In that sense, “Air” feels like the type of mid-budget, adult drama that rarely gets made anymore, yet excelled in an era like the 1990s, when Affleck and Damon rose to prominence; 1996’s “Jerry Maguire” feels like the most apt point of comparison.
Yet, what differentiates it from films of the past is the movie’s insistence on examining its very design.
In a post-Reagan world, arguably everything can be monetized. Everything can be a brand, with Affleck intelligently underscoring this pervasive ethos through an opening montage of 1980s advertisements, set to Dire Straits’s “Money For Nothing.” One of many great needle-drops on the film’s killer dad rock soundtrack.
“You’re remembered for the rules you break,” Nike CEO Phil Knight, played by Affleck himself, says to Vaccaro. A mantra that becomes the backbone of how Nike transformed turned the world of marketing on its head: building the brand around the figure, versus the other way around.
Vaccaro and his company of underdogs attempt to smuggle a level of humanity and pathos into a pre-established mode of brand recognition, a perfectly apt metaphor for the film itself.
While presented as a down-the-middle, breezy sports drama, Affleck and his company manage to smuggle their own levels of humanity and sociopolitical commentary on capitalism, Nike’s role in the free market and giving economic power to the players into a crowd-pleasing package.
This sense of exigency, ironically housed in an Amazon-produced box, excels “Air” beyond most films of its ilk.
Affleck remains incredibly aware of the grip these Reagan-era reverberations hold on our modern landscape, while managing to thoroughly entertain throughout the 1 hour 52 minute runtime.
Society remains beholden to branding, so why not utilize the brand and the cast’s collective movie star cache to make a statement?
Are these multi-millionaire straight white males the true underdogs/smugglers of Hollywood? Perhaps not. Yet, I can’t help but root for them.
“Air” is playing in theaters nationwide.
