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MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

One of my favorite quotes from the late great film critic Roger Ebert is: “It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.”  In other words, a good movie should be able to engage the viewer who isn’t particularly interested in the subject matter, simply because it is a well-made entertainment.

Air is a 2-hour movie that is consistently entertaining, often funny, and light on its feet as it spins its somewhat (but not completely) uneventful story about how the Nike company created the Air Jordan basketball shoe. Since everyone knows how the story ends, the film takes us back to 1984 at a time before there was a shoe and before Michael Jordan became known as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. This setting allows the filmmakers to wallow in nostalgia and fill the screen with pop culture references and a soundtrack filled with singable pop songs.

We follow Sonny Vaccaro (Damon), a talent scout for Nike, as he tries to persuade marketing director Rob Strasser (Bateman), executive Howard White (Chris Tucker) and CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to spend their entire recruitment budge of $250,000 to acquire Michael Jordan’s endorsement before Jordan began his first year as a pro basketball player. Sonny also has to deal with Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina), who isn’t about to make things easy.

As the pursuit of funding continues, there is a shoe to be designed and a negotiation with Michael Jordan to nail down. Sonny is given good advice to visit Michael’s mother and get her on his side, so he makes a trip to North Carolina and encounters the formidable presence of Deloris Jordan (in another star turn from Viola Davis).

Everything in the film snaps, with quick banter and great timing, with some interesting sports trivia sprinkled in. We don’t really get to see much basketball. Michael Jordan (Damian Young) has no speaking lines in the movie; briefly glimpsed, often with his back to the audience, he is treated like Mohammed or Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures. It’s a clever gimmick that actually works to keep the Nike team front and center.

If you can handle the rough language, I think just about anyone should enjoy this movie. Just don’t think too much about how expensive this shoe costs, how it was manufactured by underpaid workers overseas, or how hard it was to convince your kids that a nice pair of Keds were “awesome kicks”.

Halo and Pitchfork Rating:

Three halos: An incredibly entertaining movie about the creation and marketing of a basketball shoe.
One pitchfork: A lot of swearing.

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