When final we left Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the just-outside-Boston buddies who gained screenplay Oscars for Good Will Searching a quarter-century in the past, they have been mired within the Center Ages, telling a story (that they’d written, with Nicole Holofcener) of a mighty injustice. That movie, The Final Duel, was an underappreciated curio, an odd and finally righteous film that spoke to the current in olden phrases.
The blokes have left all that mud and problem behind for his or her newest outing collectively, Air (in theaters April 5), wherein they each act, with Affleck directing. (They’ve handed the screenwriting duties to Alex Convery.) On this movie, the primary from Damon and Affleck’s Artists Fairness manufacturing home, nothing is extra necessary than a sneaker. The mission is to entertain, and perhaps dimly encourage.
Damon performs Sonny Vaccaro, a advertising and marketing man at Nike whose specialty was scouting up-and-coming basketball gamers for potential endorsement offers. It’s the drab early Nineteen Eighties: a go-go time for a lot of, however an period of problem for Nike, then a comparatively fledging shoe firm nipping on the heels of titans like Converse and Adidas. Vaccaro, performed with weary decency by Damon, wants a giant win, a expertise to hook Nike’s fortunes to in order that he, and the company, would possibly thrive.
He finds that star in Michael Jordan, by some measure the best basketball participant of all time. Air is about Vaccaro’s efforts to signal a younger Jordan to Nike, creating the bestselling Air Jordan sneaker within the course of. However Jordan is just not actually within the film—we glimpse the again of an actor’s head and that’s just about it. Air as a substitute focuses on Vaccarro and on Jordan’s shrewd mother and father, performed by real-life couple Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, inching their manner towards a deal that may change their lives—and, maybe, the lifetime of the nation.
I’m joking about that final half, although I’m unsure the film is. A curious weight hangs over these proceedings, an insistence that we’re watching one thing vital when, once more, that is all nearly a sneaker and the making of plenty of cash. Affleck, in his competent and earnest course, tries to whip up one thing significant from this story of contracts, and Damon works arduous to promote it.
Right here and there, they succeed. Air is neatly acted and agreeably paced, a drama of invention that warmly invitations the viewers into an fascinating course of. I’ve by no means as soon as in my life discovered myself questioning how the Air Jordan got here to be, and but Air makes that origin story compelling sufficient. Damon, Davis, and Tennon are joined on their journey by a bunch of excellent firm. There’s Affleck (as Nike exec Phil Knight); there’s the always-welcome Chris Messina; there’s invaluable New York theater mainstay Matthew Maher; and there’s even Chris Tucker, making a uncommon display screen look. All of them make a persuasive pitch, advertising and marketing their film as one thing greater than it’s.
However the smallness of what’s being talked about right here is inescapable. The film treats Vaccaro and his cohort as if they’re the rumpled-shirt heroes of Highlight, dragging an important factor into being. They’re all getting, to make use of reality-show parlance, the hero’s edit, bathed in a deeply credulous wash of sentiment. We’re meant, I believe, to really feel stirrings of awe, beholding an act of creation that tells us one thing about our previous and our current. However Affleck doesn’t efficiently join this particular monetary windfall to some grander American thought. Between Air and the just lately launched Tetris, I’m discovering it arduous to be moved by tales of profitable enterprise. Congrats, I assume?
The bizarre blunder of Air is Jordan’s invisibility. It’s been reported that Affleck didn’t wish to make a Michael Jordan biopic, which is comprehensible; that may be an endeavor maybe not greatest suited to Affleck. However Jordan’s absence from this movie leaves a giant, leaping void on the heart. We’re pressured to root for advertising and marketing executives as a substitute of the phenomenon being marketed. With out its raison d’etre, there’s not sufficient juice to maintain the movie. All of it feels a bit foolish by the heartstring-tugging finish.
There are some sinister notes in there, too. Is that this actually the place we’ve discovered ourselves: making an attempt to wring emotion out of straightforward, cynical tales of branding? Properly, sure, in fact that’s the place we’re, right here on the finish of all the pieces. I suppose I’ll simply need to brace myself for the uplifting film about Britney Spears’s Pepsi marketing campaign. Which, glum as I’m to confess it, really sounds form of good.
