Air

Ben Affleck is going to mess around and have a directing career as storied as Clint Eastwood.

Affleck’s Air is a dramedy about the men at Nike who figured out before his rookie season that Michael Jordan would be one of the great NBA players of all time and made a big bet on landing him for their poorly performing basketball division.

The Air Jordan would become the most iconic shoe, and one of the most iconic products of the 20th century.

In the world of the movie Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) watches a game tape and realizes that he must land Jordan. He then drags Nike founder Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to the table. He’s assisted by Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), Howard White (Chris Tucker), and Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) as the men who will eventually blast Jordan and Nike into the stratosphere. Vaccaro drafts Jordan’s mother, Deloris (Viola Davis), to his cause and outmaneuvers Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina).

There’s a temptation to single out individual performers here (cause this is the section in the review where that goes) but everyone nails every moment.

Falk? Smashes it.

Tucker? Amazing.

Moore? Weird and wonderful.

Julius Tennon gets, I think, three lines as Jordan’s father. He nails it.

Viola Davis? Come on man. She’s perfect.

Now in real life, even though Jordan was not picked first in the draft there were plenty of people who knew what he was about to do. Affleck and Damon talked about how Bobby Knight recognized Jordan’s unique abilities and was explaining it before he went to the NBA.

Does that matter in the movie? Nope. Every scene in this movie works. Every scene shows Vaccaro as the guy who sees what others either don’t understand or don’t yet believe.

No one out there can play earnest belief quite as well as Damon and no one can hit ego-driven anger like Affleck. I don’t know quite how Phil Knight is going to feel about Affleck’s portrayal of that particular moment in his life but in the context of the movie, it was just the right amount of sound and fury.

The other thing that’s striking is that while you know how the story ends (or think you know) it has no impact on how strongly the movie engages the audience. You know what’s going to happen in Titanic too. But knowing actually enhances that story. Here too, interesting characters, smart dialogue, and a unique view of the material make the movie a lot more than its ending.

One thing that the audience gets with a setup like this is that the movie can convey something to us that the characters do not yet realize. Everyone in the flick who works at Nike can’t stop talking about how fun it used to be. How Nike was great when it was just starting out. They don’t know, I thought, how great this thing is going to become. These men in their 40s who think they are done, don’t realize that some really great days are yet to come.

You may not feel that, but as a dad in his 40s, I can confirm that it hit me hard.

When we get to the conclusion Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery have one more card to play, something basketball and shoe people know but a general audience member (like me) did not know.

I don’t want to spoil it but it’s not only the thrilling cherry on top it also feels like a statement of purpose for two guys (Affleck and Damon) who just started a movie studio with the idea that everyone who works on the movie will share in the success.

My final thought was how Affleck the director (divorced from his star persona and celebrity) has made a series of incredible movies. Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo, and Air are all four or five-star flicks for me. I’ve never seen Live by Night but I clearly need to remedy that.

What I’m struck by is that Affleck, like Eastwood or Eastwood mentor Don Seigel, never does more than the story requires and never lets the flick drag. It’s clean, professional, and winning storytelling.

Here’s hoping for several more decades of Affleck the director.