REVIEW: Air [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 111 minutes
Release Date: April 5th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Warner Bros. / Amazon Studios
Director(s): Ben Affleck
Writer(s): Alex Convery

You are remembered for the rules you break.

You can’t change an industry by embracing the status quo. It’s something every upstart knows and every billionaire forgets. And it’s a truth that’s never been more prevalent than right now with an astronomical wealth disparity increased during a pandemic as everyone with means profited off the desperation of those left to die. That’s why my favorite part of Ben Affleck’s Air is when Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) basically tells Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) that he never should have gone public.

That the payday effectively castrated him as far as being able to roll the dice and take a risk due to Wall Street’s grip squeezing him into a sure-thing conservative mentality. A mentality that exemplifies everything that’s wrong with the world today. Art, beauty, and progress usurped by commerce and greed, homogenized into nondescript soylent that the masses begrudgingly consume while the one-percent crushes them for another meaningless percentage point.

It’s the lone moment in Alex Convery’s script where you wonder if this thing might be more subversive than the rubber-stamped mythologizing of a corporation the trailers correctly sell. That doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining, though. Nor that it’s not good. Affleck has created a bona fide crowd pleaser that has as much fun with the audience as it does the real-life people portrayed.

That includes Knight too with jokes at his expense via a faux Buddhist, awkwardly self-conscious yet woefully egotistical persona Affleck knocks out of the park—an image that surely went down easier with the addition of an epilogue slide reductively glorifying him as a saint who donated two billion dollars to charity during his lifetime (only .04% of his current net worth let alone the billions spent along the way). But that’s the game you must play to get projects like this off the ground. And it’s worth it to give the Sonnys, Rob Strassers (Jason Bateman), Peter Moores (Matthew Maher), and Deloris Jordans (Viola Davis) of the world their due.

A majority of the film takes place over the weekend Nike is given to pitch Michael Jordan despite the company’s abysmal basketball shoe division (rumors of being dissolved travel around the office) and the player wanting nothing to do with them (Adidas is his first choice with Converse the only legitimate alternative). Only after Sonny stakes his reputation on a hope and prayer by going completely off-book to secure that meeting (much to Chris Messina’s David Falk’s chagrin as Jordan’s foul-mouthed agent) does Knight let him start planning an actual design and campaign.

It’s then that Damon and Bateman inject some heart and soul into what had been a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants comic powerhouse of big personalities and bottomless sarcasm. I would have liked a bit more “Mad Men”-esque inside baseball, but this isn’t a long-form drama. It’s a breezy adventure of blue-collar gumption that does well to forget it literally exists inside a white-collar package.

The acting is top-notch across the board with Davis stealing the show despite her character only really driving two scenes (with Sonny at home at the beginning and on the phone at the end). Damon is the perfect straight man throughout, always outwaiting and provoking his more manic scene partners (Affleck, Bateman, and especially Messina).

I could have done without all the needle drops—a couple lead into another music cue before the scene even changes—but I can’t deny the soundtrack isn’t phenomenal removed from that usage. And the attention to detail with wall-to-wall nostalgia bombs via product placement and pop culture really brings the entire production home. Because it’s not about Jordan (he’s always missing or cropped off-screen) or even Nike. No, it’s instead a period-specific workplace comedy about taking ownership in yourself and demanding your worth even if those things are mostly glossed over as concessions rather than victories.