Written by Andreas Babiolakis

Ben Affleck is both a strong director and one who hasn’t really had a film fully tick since his debut, Gone Baby Gone. Even his Best Picture winner, Argo, doesn’t get talked about nearly as much as it once did, perhaps because the exhilarating sheen of the pacing of the film (where Affleck succeeds as a filmmaker) dissipates and the structural flimsiness rises to the top. Affleck is great at making exciting films, but time and time again there’s some sort of a narrative shortcoming that hurts the legacy of his visions. We’ve reached Air, which came out nearly a year ago (I didn’t get around to reviewing it upon its release due to personal matters at the time), and the short-term adoration for the film continues to linger. Barack Obama has crowned it one of the best films of 2023. Alex Convery seems to be in many discussions surrounding the Best Original Screenplay categories of many awards shows. Will this same kind of buzz exist in ten years time? Actually, this time it may, since the sports genre is unquestionably one of the weakest in all of film history, so even a motion picture about a product endorsement attached to a professional athlete shimmers in comparison with many of its peers.

Part of this appeal is the similarity Air has with Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, which is already being heralded as a perennial sports drama, but both films share the same disinterest in the actual showcasing of sports within a sports-related film (go figure). Both features fixate on the business politics surrounding leagues, teams, and players. Moneyball focuses on the use of sabermetrics to fix a struggling Oakland Athletics team in the MLB, so Air isn’t quite as based on numbers (Moneyball also feels like an overall discussion on the sports industries and leagues as a whole, and the ushering in of digital number crunching and analytics obsessions to fine-tune a decades-old game, hence its major staying power). Air is more interested in the business side of things. Nike’s talent scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is given the task of finding the next spokesperson athlete to represent the company’s sneakers. The NBA’s then-latest draft (in 1984) has gone underway, and a lot of the draft class is rendered untouchable (Hakeem Olajuwon), questionable (back when John Stockton was considered an iffy choice for being average and short), or problematic (Charles Barkley). Then there was Michael Jordan, who was so heavily affiliated with Adidas that those stripes may as well have been tattooed onto him. Jordan was out of the question, even as a third-overall pick who wasn’t quite the legend that he’s seen as today (outside of his game-winning shot in college.

After a meeting to discuss which poor soul should be the face of the Nike company when business isn’t great, Vaccaro — after a late night of watching video after video after video — settles on the fact that they must pursue Jordan, regardless of his stubbornness and how final his allegiance to Adidas may seem. So begins Air: the quest to land Michael Jordan at Nike, and the prologue of the mythological sneakers known as Air Jordans. The dialogue by Convery is snappy and electric, and the actors speaking it do a great job of maintaining that pulse that Air possesses from square one. The film kicks off like The Big Short or any similar pop-culture-infused commentary but with a lot more subtleness, where instead of stuffing metaphysical depictions of commercials into a non-diegetic montage, we can see athletes and sponsors on cereal boxes. We are within the zeitgeist here and not outside as observing aliens. Air does a great job of immersing you in a film that isn’t even about a basketball legend but, rather, his fucking shoes (or his line of shoes, to be specific). Even though we know the end, time feels like it is of the essence. The film does a great job detailing the world of basketball, Nike and its competitors, and so many other factors, so you get quite invested.

*Air* makes a film about a shoe line exciting. That alone feels like an achievement.

All of these swirling facts, details, one-liners, and references build up to what feels like a titanic take on Jordan’s legacy and the future of celebrity endorsements in fashion, but instead it’s a lot more narrow in scope than that. The climax is the pitch itself: the one where Vaccaro and company meet with Jordan and his parents to try and persuade them to go with Nike instead of Adidas or any of the other top-bidding adversaries. The pitch itself reads well as a scene in a film, with its dynamic pacing and bombastic dialogue (Damon’s monologue alone is likely why this film will be nominated for its writing), but when you consider that this is what the entire film drives towards, it feels a little disappointing. Afterwards, there are a few important sequences as well, but the entire film constructs itself to the pitch itself. The vast majority of what transpires from said meeting is riddled with anecdotes (although Jordan’s career is referenced via a clever montage during the pitch itself, which I have to admit is effective and dazzling). I can’t help but feel like the film was made for a wow, and it resolves on a “neato”. This pitch could have been the start of the third act (or even the halfway point) of a film with even more to say, and I know Air had the capability and wherewithal to say more.

Still, as is, Air is compelling. It’s another showcase of Affleck knowing how to capture tone and pacing in his films that will blow you away upon the first watch, but you’ll start to notice that Air deflates a little bit when you really think about it and what your takeaways were. That first watch is mainly riveting, I must be honest. It propels the narrative of Jordan’s legacy (at least for a little bit), gets you glued to the risky decisions made to save a company and many jobs, and you get some context on why all of this matters. This feels like a great third win in a best-of-seven series. Air was great for a little bit, but this feels like the moment where the late Kobe Bryant would have scoffed at the celebration and said “Job’s not finished”. You have to close out, reach the finish line, and run through the tape (thanks, Chris Webber). Air is all about the fancy shot, but the follow-through is crucial; any basketball fiend knows this. At least the shot goes in, so there’s that.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.