Between 2007 and 2012, Ben Affleck directed a trio of movies, including eventual Best Picture Oscar winner Argo. Since 2012, Affleck's only directed two features, the 2017 dud Live By Night and now his newest directorial effort, Air. Affleck's time away from the camera can be attributed to an array of factors, some rooted in the film industry and others deeply personal But he's back now as a filmmaker with Air, a crowdpleaser attempting to be a Jerry Maguire yarn about the Nike corporation. The feature is nothing challenging or revolutionary, but its easygoing charms feel like a good way for Affleck to segway back into the director's chair. Plus, there's enough talent going on behind the camera to remind people why Affleck garnered so much buzz for his directorial skills in the first place.
Air begins in 1984, with the Nike corporation decidedly in third place among the big shoe companies. With Adidas and Converse doing circles around Nike, this company needs something big to put it on the map. Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a key member of Nike's sports division, is determined to do just that, even though his abrasive attitude makes him a nightmare for some of his co-workers. Vaccaro's got drive to spare and he's now using every ounce of his energy to get Nike to sign a sponsorship deal with a rookie player by the name of Michael Jordan. Instead of this shoe company getting endorsements from a bunch of athletes, Vaccaro wants Nike to put all its chips on Jordan. The obstacles here are enormous and include Jordan's agent, David Falk (Chris Messina) not wanting Nike anywhere near his client, while Vaccaro's boss, Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), hates the entire plan. But if Vaccaro can pull this off, he's convinced that both Nike and Jordan could make history.
It's often said that the ending is the most important part of your movie since it's what the audience takes home with them when they leave the theater. That may be true, but nailing your beginning, the part where audiences determine whether or not they want to emotionally invest in your story at all is also crucial. Alex Convery's Air screenplay stumbles in this portion of its plot. These opening sequences, taking place in tiny conference rooms and showing characters like Vaccaro surrounded by dusty cubicles, certainly convey the idea that Nike doesn't have any cash to spare. A later scene with Vaccaro's friend and fellow executive Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), where this guy pours his heart out about needing money so he can be in his daughter's life, does a much better job of establishing some personal emotional stakes for these characters. Why didn't they lead with elements like Strasser's backstory?
Waiting so long to get to Strasser's motivation speaks to another issue regarding how the Air characters initially feel a bit cold and thinly sketched. Vaccaro, for instance, is mostly defined by just a brief visit to a casino while he's out scouting basketball players and being rude during work meetings. Trying to paint people with hundreds of thousands of dollars as "the little guy" could work if those "little guys" were transfixing, but initially, Air struggles to pull a Moneyball and make number-oriented people as compelling as athletes. However, once the Michael Jordan element comes into play at the half-hour mark, Air picks up speed and keeps on trucking for the rest of its runtime. The more nebulously-defined cash troubles of Nike have been replaced with more exciting concrete forms of conflict like Vaccaro trying to figure out how to communicate to Jordan's family or the enjoyably arch agent Falk throwing up roadblocks against Nike any chance he gets.
The introduction of the Jordan family, and especially mother Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), also brings an extra jolt of humanity to the movie. Suddenly, the contrast between the offices of Nike and working-class families is more apparent and that emphasizes the urgency of Jordan finding the right people to cooperate with in his basketball career. Convery's dialogue also becomes a lot more engaging in depicting Vaccaro trying to wine and dine potential clients like the Jordan's with his candor. A moment where he impersonates how various Converse and Adidas executives will try to win over Michael Jordan is both extremely humorous and a good way of showing how much experienced Vaccar has in this business.
As the plot gets more and more engaging in Air, Affleck's direction maintains a steady hand. Save for a few moments of showy camerawork (like a conversation between major Nike executives inexplicably told with a camera rotating around them), Affleck and cinematographer Robert Richardson's visual approach here rides a fine line between being unintrusive but also clearly not being on autopilot. Especially nice is the heavy emphasis on natural light at Jordan's residence, even when Deloris is taking a phone call inside there are beams of sunlight pouring in from the windows. Meanwhile, the Nike officers are intentionally captured with all interior lighting and a lot less variety in the color palette. The two locations might be on separate planets, a fact that communicates just how initially detached Nike is from the client its executives crave. That sentiment is nicely communicated in Affleck's direction without sacrificing the grounded visual aims of Air.
Air isn't a movie that rewrites the book on sports films or subverts expectations. Its deluge of 1980s needle drops especially could've used an extra jolt of imagination, as Air goes to the well of vintage tunes that have been used all the time in other period piece features. But it is a feature that eventually had me rooting for its main characters despite such a slow start while some memorable supporting performances (Viola Davis and Matthew Maher are the MVPs of the cast) offer up plenty of entertainment. Being agreeable isn't always a bad thing and that's just what Air resonated as for me, a person with zero basketball or Nike knowledge. I'm sure for dads and basketball geeks everywhere this will play like the first appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
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