Nothing says 2023 like a film about a multinational billion-dollar corporation having to go back to 1984 in order to tell a story about how they were once liked in American culture.
When Nike isn’t making $700 shoes in Taiwanese sweatshops, funding Colin Kaepernick’s anti-American tirade, or giving money to Dylan Mulvaney because he’s doing a piss poor job at pretending to be a woman; Nike is teaming with Hollywood to get the biggest actors in the game today to tell a story about the most pivotal moment in the company’s history. A major endorsement deal with soon-to-be the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan.
In 1984, Oregon-based Nike, Inc. was on the verge of bankruptcy due to low footwear sales. At the time, the company was getting killed by Adidas and Converse and they were too poor to compete with the rival companies meaning they couldn’t get a big-name athlete to sell their brand.
Nike’s basketball talent scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) looks to come up with a new pitch for a shoe line based on current American sports. Sonny wants to take a shot at Michael Jordan but the company believes he is off limits because he is too expensive for the basketball division’s meager budget.
But Vaccaro becomes convinced Nike should pursue who he considers a generational talent, with both brand and athlete building off each other.
There are a lot of issues with ‘Air’ due to the fact, the focus of the film is on several different people simultaneously.
Watching the trailer you think that this is a film about Michael Jordan and Jordan’s rise to being the biggest shoe salesman in the world. But this isn’t the story about Michael Jordan, its a story about Nike more specifically Nike’s rise to dominance by staking their entire company’s reputation on a then unproven basketball player.
The film is a big commercial for Nike, it props up the company as the underdog that overcame the odds to stake its claim in the sports apparel Arena. The film portrays Nike in a role that they haven’t been in almost 40 years.
At one point in the film, as Matt Damon’s character is talking to Michael Jordan, who audiences never actually see throughout any course of the movie outside of flashbacks. Damon gives a strong speech that is portrayed as inspirational but in reality, the speech plays as a Nike ad that you will see on television and that’s supposed to be the emotional climax of the film.
Michael Jordan isn’t really in the movie, the catalyst of the film is Michael Jordan but the film decides to focus on Jordan’s mother played Viola Davis who is portrayed as the person who runs the Jordan household.
Inexplicably the film glosses over Jordan’s connection with his father, which was a massive turning point in Jordan’s real life after he was murdered in the 1990s in order to focus on the matriarch of his family rather than the patriarch.
There are a lot of big-name celebrities in this movie from Ben Affleck to Matt Damon, Chris Tucker to Marlon Wayans. Affleck performs double duty by playing the founder Phil Knight as well as directly in the film. However it’s the writing of this film that leaves a lot to be desired because screenwriter Alex Convery doesn’t have a single writing credit on his resume.
There are so many ways that this film could have told a better story dealing with early-day Nike and early-day Michael Jordan. However, because this film was written by Cinematic equipment of an amateur, the film misses a lot of marks and the only last impression of the movie is that the film is one big missed opportunity.
‘Air’ is the textbook example of a great idea but terrible execution
2.5/5
Don’t forget to Subscribe for Updates. Also, Follow Us at Society-Reviews, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Odysee, Rumble, and Twitch
Nike had no involvement in the film’s production. Even if I do watch this movie sometime, does that make me want to but more Nike? No.
‘buy’