Movie Number 19 of 2023
The Movie: Air
The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens
Stars: 3.75
Were we really that daggy back in the 80's? That's the first question I asked myself while viewing this film.
The second thing I thought to myself was that the 80's really did have the best music ever.
This was an enjoyable diversion for many reasons. It's got everything Hollywood can provide, including star power and a killer soundtrack. It's also deals with a period in my living memory, which is fun.
"Air reveals the unbelievable game-changing partnership between a then-rookie Michael Jordan and Nike's fledgling basketball division which revolutionized the world of sports and contemporary culture with the Air Jordan brand. This moving story follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent, and the basketball phenom who would become the greatest of all time." That's how RottenTomatoes.com describes it.
What this doesn't say is that collaborative piece, with Ben Affleck at the director's helm, feels like a bit of a buddy movie.
Most of the film focuses on Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a basketball talent scout for NIKE, who comes up with the idea of signing on Michael Jordan to be the face of their basketball shoes - this is before this was a big thing.
He comes up against his colleagues - Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) the marketing guy, Howard White (Chris Tucker) the talent minder, Peter Moore (Matt Maher) the shoe designer and Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) the CEO of the NIKE.
He also has to win over Jordan's mother, Deloris (Viola Davis), negotiating with her instead of the Sports Agent, David Falk (Chris Messina). It's his interactions with Falk which draw the most laughs.
The other thing this film does really well is to capture the 80's as they were. Seeing this all took place in 1984, when I was sixteen, everything was relatable, from the green screen computers to the brick sized mobile phones that nobody had to all sorts of other things that were instantly recognizable if you were around in the 80s.
Ben Affleck's direction is assured and fun. For what is ostensibly a story about a corporate deal, this is engaging stuff.
The other amazing thing is the statistics displayed at the end of the film. Do we, as humanity, really spend THAT much on sports shoes? It's astounding.
This film is worth a viewing.
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