Air' movie

2023 - 4 - 5

Air

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Roger Ebert"

Air movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert)

“Air” bristles with the infectious energy of the man at its center: Sonny Vaccaro, who's hustling to make the deal of a lifetime.

[Hulk Hogan](/cast-and-crew/hulk-hogan), the “Where’s the Beef?” ad, President Reagan, Princess Diana, and more weren’t enough, he randomly throws in a Rubik’s Cube or a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards as a transitional device. [Alex Convery](/cast-and-crew/alex-convery), Affleck tells the story of how Nike nabbed Jordan by creating a shoe that wasn’t just for him but of him—the representation of his soon-to-be iconic persona in a form that made us feel as if we, too, could reach such heights. His choice in cinematographer, longtime [Martin Scorsese](/cast-and-crew/martin-scorsese) and [Quentin Tarantino](/cast-and-crew/quentin-tarantino) collaborator [Robert Richardson](/cast-and-crew/robert-richardson), is a prime example. [Charlese Antoinette Jones](/cast-and-crew/charlese-antoinette-jones)), knows Jordan can change all that, and most “Air” consists of him convincing everyone around him of that notion. [Michael Jordan](/cast-and-crew/michael-jordan) became a superstar and arguably the greatest basketball player in the history of the game. His fifth feature is much in the same vein as the previous movies he’s helmed: “ [Gone Baby Gone](/reviews/gone-baby-gone-2007),” “ [The Town](/reviews/the-town-2010),” “ [Argo](/reviews/argo-2012)” (which earned him a best-picture Oscar) and “Live By Night.” He makes the kind of solid, mid-budget movies for grown-ups that are far too rare these days.

Air review – Ben Affleck and Matt Damon drop the ball in Michael ... (The Guardian)

Affleck's dramatisation of the bid to get Jordan to endorse Nike's radical new sneaker almost ignores the most compelling character.

It might, however, be interesting to show it as a double bill with [Michael Jordan](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/michael-jordan) to promote the revolutionary new Air Jordan sneaker, which was to be designed entirely for the basketball player – an integral part of his brand identity. The relationship between her and Vaccaro doesn’t really feature, and her personal life with her husband, James (Julius Tennon), is evidently not interesting enough to merit much or any screen time - unlike all the grinning, besuited execs such as Nike CEO Phil Knight (played by director Ben Affleck), marketing director Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), Nike’s NBA liaison Howard White (Chris Tucker) and Jordan’s own aggressive sub-Jerry-Maguire agent David Falk (Chris Messina).

How <i>Air</i> Tells the True Story of Michael Jordan's Nike Shoe ... (TIME)

Here's how to know what's fact and fiction in the new movie about the creation of Michael Jordan's iconic Nike sneakers, 'Air.'

[USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2015/09/30/error-jordan-key-figures-still-argue-over-who-responsible-nike-deal/72884830/). Portrayed by actor Damian Young, Jordan doesn’t make an appearance until the final scenes of the film—and even then, his face isn’t shown, with almost exclusively shots of his back. By all accounts, the initial Jordan and Nike deal was unprecedented. He had his idea of what he wanted to do and he didn’t want to go with Nike, that’s for sure. “Sonny (Vaccaro) likes to take the credit. In the film, Vaccaro, a former high school basketball tournament organizer, is in charge of helping to develop the fledgling basketball division at Nike by identifying and recruiting top talent in the league for shoe deals and endorsements. In the film, Nike is portrayed as a novice company of sorts, suffering from some serious growing pains after going public, which Knight believes can be solved if they can tap into the basketball market. “He wasn’t the CEO of Nike,” Convery says, noting that he spoke with Vaccaro himself while polishing the screenplay. [NBA legend, Michael Jordan](https://time.com/5869094/michael-jordan-rap-the-last-dance/). At the time, Jordan was a soon-to-be NBA rookie ranked third in the draft, while Nike was a veritable underdog in the world of sports shoes, known more for its running sneakers than flashy basketball kicks. Neither Jordan nor Nike were the household names they are now at the time of the signing in 1984. We all know how it ended, but to be able to look at how we got there was very compelling.”

'Air' review: Damon and Affleck star in origin story of Nike's iconic Air ... (WABC-TV)

Sandy Kenyon says the new movie 'Air', starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, about how Nike recruited Michael Jordan is one of the year's best.

A great script is directed by Ben Affleck, who has a supporting role as Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. The story of how Air Jordan sneakers came into being is made remarkably compelling given that it's a story set mainly in corporate offices. The movie, about how Nike and Michael Jordan together changed the world of sports, has a score of 97% on the Rotten Tomatoes website.

Breaking down NC scenes & references in 'Air,' the new Michael ... (Raleigh News & Observer)

New “Air” movie directed by Ben Affleck details the 1984 Nike shoe deal with Michael Jordan. It includes references to his time spent in NC.

During that scene, flashes of Jordan’s real-life career and later life flash onto the screen, including images that allude to the 1993 murder of James Jordan in Lumberton. They moved away from the state for a period while James Jordan was in the military and Deloris attended trade school, then moved back to North Carolina before leaving again for Brooklyn, New York, where Michael was born. They moved back to North Carolina, to Wilmington, in 1968. ▪ James Worthy, who played at UNC from 1979 to 1982, then went on to become the first overall pick in the 1982 NBA draft and was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers. Vaccaro replays Jordan’s shot several times in quick succession, realizing that the play was not a fluke, but rather designed for Jordan. (Fun fact: Tennon and Davis are married in real life.) ▪ Sam Perkins, who played at UNC from 1980 to 1984. During the meeting, Nike marketing executive Rob Strasser (played by Jason Bateman), suggests several possible names and projects photos of the players, including: ▪ Bob McAdoo, who played at UNC for one season, from 1971 to 1972. Jordan’s deal with Nike came after his three-year college career playing basketball at UNC-Chapel Hill, from 1981 to 1984. As Vaccaro continues to pursue the deal with Jordan, he decides — against the advice and urging of Falk — to visit Jordan’s parents, James (played by Julius Tennon) and Deloris (played by Viola Davis), at their home in Wilmington. McAdoo, who is originally from Greensboro, went on to play in the NBA, and in 1984 was playing for the Lakers.

Movie Review: 'Air' shoots and scores, with story, character ... (The Spokesman-Review)

"Air," Ben Affleck's funny, moving and surprisingly meaningful tale of how Nike came to create Air Jordan basketball shoes, might have been a real snore.

“Air” is that rare sports movie that is virtually guaranteed to appeal to both hardcore NBA fans and people who don’t know a 3-point line from a field goal (thanks, Wikipedia!). The modest but gratifying gifts of “Air” lie in its seeming effortlessness, reassuring viewers that a good movie can still be a good story, well told. Spouting his own aphorism, at one point Sonny reminds his colleagues that “you’re remembered for the rules you break.” Affleck doesn’t break rules with “Air” as much as restore them, obeying principles that have seemed mortally endangered in recent years – about sound structure, recognizably human characters, satisfying catharsis, authentic but not overreaching depth. Affleck has said in interviews that Michael Jordan had only one stipulation in the making of “Air”: that Viola Davis would play Deloris. “Air” begins in the 1980s, shortly after the company has gone public; although co-founder Phil Knight had attained a 50% market share in the athletic shoe market, in basketball he was trailing behind Converse and Adidas. “Air,” Ben Affleck’s funny, moving and surprisingly meaningful tale of how Nike came to create Air Jordan basketball shoes, might have been a real snore.

No substance, just 'Air' (NPR)

Ben Affleck directs a movie that tries (and fails) to squeeze dramatic tension out of the origins of the Air Jordan. Matt Damon and Viola Davis star in this ...

With Air – which concludes with subtitles pointing out how the lush benefactors of this sweet, sweet deal have donated money to good causes in the years since – there's no there there, no feeling to latch onto besides, "Why was this made?" Yet there's something ultimately hollow about trying to extract FUBU mentality from what amounts to a two-hour ad for Nike and the uber-rich, especially in this economy. A Black man disrupting the historically racist system that undervalues Black talent by forcing that same system to run him his bag, and then some – this will undoubtedly appeal to a certain demographic that still reveres the old-school definition of the American Dream and celebrates Black billionaires as meaningful "progress." Air is convinced there's enough nail-biting tension to be gleaned from this conundrum and enough audience buy-in of the Jordan mythos and brand to overcome such a flimsy premise. And on the subject of Jerry Maguire: Like Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Rod Tidwell, Michael Jordan's strategic aims to secure the best deal possible are steered by the most important Black woman in his life – in both cases, there's a nod to subversiveness that doesn't quite hold water if you think about it too hard. In my screening of Air, there were whoops and cheers when Nike finally accepted the terms of Deloris' negotiations. The dramatic "stakes," if one wants to call them that – and if one does, they're being overly generous – are as follows: It's 1984, and Nike trails behind Adidas and Converse in sales. (He only gets to see her once a week following his divorce and always brings her a new pair of complimentary Nikes. If you work at the giant corporation that is Nike at that time, that's a problem. Directed by Ben Affleck with a screenplay by Alex Convery, Air is a soulless dramatization of how a giant corporation convinced a promising NBA rookie to make its already wealthy and well-off board members, CEOs, and salespeople even wealthier and set for life. It's presented as a classic sports movie about an underdog team (in this case, Nike) achieving greatness with a game-winning score (a rousing boardroom sales pitch). But we're living in the era of the nostalgic headline-to-Hollywood pipeline and in an age where entrepreneurs are obsessed with being credited as artistic visionaries, so perhaps it was inevitable something like the movie Air would come to exist.