‘AIR’ Gives Loving Legacy to Jordan’s Mother
I’ll admit, it’s a little hard for me to give a totally unbiased review of AIR. I grew up in the 1990s when there was no sports star bigger than Michael Jordan and liking basketball is practically in my DNA. Naturally, I was on board with this movie right from the jump. While AIR isn’t a movie about Jordan per se, it does cover a very interesting period of time in the NBA and in Nike’s history.
Matt Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike executive who is passionate about sports and sees enormous branding potential in future-superstar Jordan, who has yet to play his first minutes in the NBA at this point. Sonny is working for Nike under founder Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), who questions whether the basketball division can compete with power players in the market like Converse and Adidas.
With the help of fellow Nike staffers Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and Howard White (Chris Tucker), Sonny must try to secure a deal with Jordan and produce a unique shoe designed by eccentric creative Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) that will go on to become one of the most iconic footwear designs of the century.
The bulk of the film revolves around Sonny trying to convince both Knight and Jordan’s parents, father James (Julius Lennon) and mother Deloris (an always-outstanding Viola Davis) to believe in his groundbreaking idea and proceed with the deal.
AIR makes the smart decision of not focusing on Jordan, utilizing actor Damian Young in a nonspeaking role as the young superstar. Instead, the film wisely makes the key character Jordan’s mother, who negotiates the majority of the deal that will go on to make her son a billionaire.
Davis has already proven that she is one of the best actresses alive and she brings a quiet strength to Deloris that instantly makes you love the character. She’s soft-spoken and warm, but still very firm and clearly sharp as a tack when it comes to a company utilizing her son’s name to sell a product. Watching her negotiate a deal with Damon over the phone through tight close-ups makes you really appreciate all the nuance in how she plays Deloris.
The movie also delivers pleasant surprises in the form of Tucker’s performance, which is warm and immediately endearing, and a cameo from Marlon Wayans. Both these two really bring it here but also help the movie tap into a level of nostalgia that will certainly connect with people like myself who grew up in the ‘90s and remember them for iconic roles during those years.
And while we’re on the subject of nostalgia, the movie handles the time period with love. While there are a fair share of needle drops for ‘80s hits, the movie doesn’t milk that ‘80s pop culture vibe in the way we usually see in today’s media. Usually, the decade is presented with bright colors, the same seven or eight chart-topping songs, lots of love for shopping malls, and nods to vintage tech. Here, though, we see more of the “real” 1980s in the form of a mostly beige and brown color palette and references to more obscure media memories like a commercial featuring Arthur Ashe.
Affleck has proven that he is a skilled director and he keeps the story tight here, coming in at under two hours and feeling snappy enough to never bore you despite talk of branding deals or percentage negotiations. He’s aware that his audience is going into this movie with context firmly in place and uses archival footage and titles to frame how the events in the film eventually result in the iconic Air Jordan brand and help immortalize Jordan as a superstar.
All of this results in a movie that is a very satisfying watch for fans of Jordan-era basketball, or anyone curious about how a kid from North Carolina became the icon of such an enormous brand.
