Air film review: Michael Jordan, Nike film deserves Oscars buzz

Ben Affleck’s Air is less a sports movie than a sports marketing movie. The script is sharp and the performances are tremendous.

Ben Affleck stars in, and directs, Air

Ben Affleck’s Air is less a sports movie than a sports marketing movie. Set in 1984, it’s about how struggling athletic shoe firm Nike teamed up with basketball rookie Michael Jordan. It was a speculative shot that, as we know, turned into a multibillion-dollar slam dunk.

It’s not about competitive basketball, because MJ is rarely seen. He’s akin to the titular character in Peter Matthiessen’s 1978 nature writing masterpiece, The Snow Leopard: majestic but elusive.

Affleck, the director and co-star, decided Jordan – considered basketball’s GOAT – too momentous to put in a film. I’m not sure about that. David Williamson did write a 1983 movie about Phar Lap after all.

However in this case it is a strength. It means the lead characters are people who don’t dribble and dunk for a living: Nike boss Phil Knight (Affleck) and senior executives Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and Howard White (Chris Tucker), sports agent David Falk (Chris Messina) and MJ’s parents Deloris (Viola Davis) and James (Julius Tennon).

The competition is in the boardroom, not the ball court, and Nike’s rivals are the two sportswear manufacturers that are outselling it: Converse and Adidas.

While Jordan is not yet in a National Basketball Association team, he’s been spotted in his college games and is of interest – up to a certain price – to the marketing divisions.

This is what makes the film fascinating. In 2023 we know who Jordan is and we know the Air Jordan line flies off the shelves as he did to the hoop. This is the story of how it happened.

Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro in Air.

The script is sharp — the quickfire dialogue between the characters is reminiscent of Mad Men or The West Wing – and the performances are tremendous.

Affleck is hilarious as the co-founder and CEO who tries too hard to be Zen. “Did the Dalai Lama have a grey Porsche, Phil?’’ Sonny asks him.

Damon is compelling as Sonny, the single, overweight talent scout who wants to risk it all to sign the tall lad from North Carolina. The speech he delivers when he sits down with Jordan (whom we only glimpse) is the sort that appears on Oscar reels.

Messina steals scenes as the highly strung sports agent. He’s not Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire. His ranting phone calls to Sonny explain the M rating.

And the list goes on. Matthew Maher is worth waiting for as eccentric shoe designer Peter Moore, creator of the Air Jordan shoe.

Affleck did meet Jordan in the planning stages. It was the now-retired basketball great who suggested Davis, one of the few EGOTs on earth (winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) play his mother.

She is great throughout but the standout moment is her response when Sonny adopts a cartoonish German accent to explain to her how Adidas will conduct negotiations.

Cinematographer Robert Richardson, a three-times Oscar winner, snapshots the transformative 80s in the opening scenes – Ronald Reagan, Mr T from the A-Team, Ghostbusters, Wham! — and the soundtrack is well-chosen. As the Jordans arrive for a meeting we hear Mike + The Mechanics’s All I Need is a Miracle.

This 112-minute movie is written by young screenwriter Alex Convery, who knows what it’s like to be a rookie. He wrote this script after watching The Last Dance, a 2020 documentary about Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls. There were no takers but the script made the 2021 Black List, an annual compilation of movie ideas that studios liked but did not make. Amazon Studios then picked up the film.

The Black List, which started in 2005, has produced several Oscar-winning films, including Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The King’s Speech (2010), The Revenant (2015) and Affleck’s Argo (2012).

Now Air has a chance of joining that team.

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The talented English actor John Boyega is best known as the rebel stormtrooper Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

In Breaking he is playing a real soldier, Brian Brown-Easley, a US marine who served in the Gulf War.

Last month marked the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Boyega is compelling as one of the soldiers who went there and came back broken.

This movie is based on a 2018 article by Aaron Gell for the online magazine Task & Purpose, which focuses on the US armed forces.

I did not know Easley’s story, so this account of an unconventional bank hold-up in Georgia unfolded as a tense thriller.

Easley, head shaven, bespectacled, wearing a grey hoodie and blue jeans, walks into the bank. He goes to a teller, withdraws a small amount of cash, then passes her a note, written in lower case: “i have a bomb”.

He says the explosive device is in his backpack. He tells the bank manager to trigger the alarm. He calls 911 and tells the operator, “I have a bomb and basically I am going to kill myself and everyone in here if my demands are not met.”

He is polite throughout, calling the women ma’am and offering multiple sorrys and thank yous. He lets the customers and other staff leave, keeping only the manager Estel (Nicole Beharie) and teller Rosa (Selenis Leyva) as hostages.

At this point it could be an unprofessional bank hold-up by an ordinary man desperate for money. Easley is separated from his wife and young daughter and lives in a cheap hotel.

The police surround the bank. When the 911 operator asks Easley what he is wearing, he goes still then squares his shoulders. It’s the first hint that he is someone who knows how snipers work.

John Boyega in Breaking.

When he hears helicopters, there’s a brief flashback to his time in Iraq. However, the director does not detail his war experience and its aftermath.

At one point his ex-wife Cassandra (Olivia Washington), reaching him by phone, asks, “Are you off your medication?” It’s Boyega’s powerful performance that offers glimpses of what might be wrong. He’s sorry one moment, in a fit of rage the next. It’s a conflicted, incongruent state of mind.

Easley’s demands are specific. Money is involved but not in the usual way. The title refers not only to the returned soldier. The Veterans’ Affairs system he has to deal with is broken too.

He wants the media to hear his story. The CNN, NBC etc vans duly arrive. This is reminiscent of one of the great bank heist-hostage movies, Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon from 1975, also based on a true story.

When Sonny (Al Pacino) shouts “Attica! Attica!” as the police approach, guns drawn, he is tapping into public anger over police and prison brutality to win over the crowd.

Easley is black. At one point he asks the bank manager, who is also African-American, if the bank has been robbed before.

She says just once and the robber was arrested rather than shot dead. “He must have been white,’’ Easley says and she does not correct him.

This racial question dominates the talks between Easley and the police negotiator, Sergeant Eli Bernard (the late, great Michael Kenneth Williams), who is also black and also an ex-marine.

“I am worth nothing. I am nothing,’’ he tells him. “I am going to die tonight and no-one is going to care why.”

He’s not completely right about that. This movie is not Dog Day Afternoon but it is an honourable follower in its footsteps.