There are multiple scenes in the movie AIR that people will be remembered for a long time, and neither of them has to do with Michael Jordan per se, but more about people, their motivations, and what drives them to be successful, happy, and loved.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a movie about Michael Jordan, but you will never see the actor Michael Jordan’s face in it, and you will only hear him say one word of dialogue.
Director Ben Affleck said this was done on purpose because you couldn’t find an actor that would work as Michael Jordan, and he didn’t want that to overshadow the movie’s central theme.
RISKS.
Many are too young to remember that for a long time, NIKE was just known as running sneakers. It lagged far behind competitors Converse and Addidas. If you were playing ball, you wore Converse because Magic, Bird, and Dr. J wore Converse. If you wanted to be cool, you wore Adidas because the rappers like Run DMC and the street kids rocked Adidas.
You only wore NIKE if you were running track or jogging. When the movie begins, NIKE is doing ok financially but is close to closing its basketball division because it isn’t making money. That is when Sonny Vaccaro, played brilliantly (I am OSCAR worthy brilliant) by Matt Damon, decides the only way save the division is to put it all on a rookie guard from North Carolina, Michael Jordan.
It might seem like a no-brainer today, but back then, no one knew Michael Jordan would be Michael Jordan, so he wasn’t the first or second pick in the draft. Furthermore, you find out that Jordan hates NIKE and doesn’t even want to take a meeting with them.
Sonny’s conversations with NIKE CEO Phil Knight and others in the company are so well done to show how this one decision could either catapult NIKE or could sink the ship.
There is one scene where Sonny is speaking to Rob Strasser, played by the fantastic Jason Bateman, and Strasser is explaining to Sonny that he only gets to see his daughter once on the weekends. The only reason she looks forward to it is that he brings her NIKE on every visit, and if he loses his job because Sonny fails to get Jordan, he will have to buy the NIKE himself because he is hanging on to the love of his kid.
It is powerful stuff that lets you know the stakes are high.
Viola Davis is the perfect choice for Michael Jordan’s mom Deloris who is the defacto boss of the movie. Her speech at the end about knowing your value and worth goes far beyond basketball. It was also good to see Chris Tucker, who plays Howard White, perform such a masterful performance.
Ben Affleck proves once again he might be a better director than an actor, and I can see why he was so proud of the movie he put together.
That said, the STAR of the movie for me was Chris Messina as David Falk. I am not sure if David Falk was like this in real life, but it doesn’t matter because Messina is hilarious in this. His phone conversations (remember this was the mid-80s) with Damon’s Sonny had people laughing so hard in the theatre I was in I was choking.
I have only been to a few movies over the last couple of years where the audience actively clapped during the film. They have all been Superhero movies (Spider-Man: No Way Home and Avengers: Endgame are two examples). Still, several times during this movie, people spontaneously started clapping because the acting was that good.
I don’t know how the OSCARS work, but if I was voting, this would be the picture of the year, and I don’t see anything coming close to beating it.
10 out of 10 BSO Stars
