Air Parent Guide

It’s 1984 and Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) has every basketball fan’s dream job. It’s up to him to sign up basketball players to endorse Nike footwear, which requires attending umpteen basketball tournaments and watching endless tapes of past games. The job is great but there’s a big problem: Nike is a minor player in the basketball world and Sonny’s budget is too small to sign the players he wants. And the player he wants most is Michael Jordan (Damian Delano Young), who’s entertaining offers from Adidas, Converse - anyone but Nike.

Jordan’s antipathy to the company doesn’t stop Sonny, who pursues the athlete from every direction, courting old friends and even appealing to the parents. Sonny’s efforts get him a meeting, but now it’s up to Nike to come up with an offer that Jordan can’t resist. This will require more than money. Nike will need all the skill of its shoe designer and the insight that Sonny has acquired over decades in the game.

I must admit that the idea of watching a movie about signing up athletes to market expensive shoes didn’t sound appealing. What got me into the theater was the cast and, as usual, Matt Damon sells the story. His Sonny is single-mindedly devoted to his job, living alone, buying groceries at 7-Eleven, and spending all his free time watching VHS tapes of basketball games. When he sees greatness in a young Michael Jordan, he risks his career to sign him. In that quest, he faces numerous obstacles: Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), the founder of Nike who is risk-averse and doesn’t want to spend the money to bring in major talent; David Falk (Chris Messina), Jordan’s agent, who has a hair-trigger temper; and Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), who is determined to secure her son’s future and won’t settle for anything less. Creativity, perseverance, expertise, and sincerity are all going to be necessary if Nike is to succeed.

Air tells an interesting story, but the movie isn’t without flaws. The first is length: this film runs at least 15 minutes too long. I don’t object to thoughtful dramas but some of this movie is just bloat and the final act is dragged out to an unforgivable extent. The second problem is profanity. There are over 50 f-bombs in the film, mostly in arguments or casual conversation. Not only do the curse words give the production a Restricted rating, they are completely unnecessary. I understand that people swear in moments of stress, but this kind of excessive profanity doesn’t add anything to the story: it just turns the air blue.

Despite this movie’s unsuitability for family audiences, it will interest some adult viewers. I’m not sure that I’d spend the money for a movie ticket though. The film was produced by Amazon Studios which is a pretty clear indicator that it’s going to stream on Prime Video in the near future. Unless you’re completely obsessed with the world of sports endorsements, I’d wait and watch the movie from the comfort of my own couch.