When Nike met Michael: ‘Air’ is a slam dunk

“Air” is a crowd-pleaser about a basketball shoe. Not just any shoe, mind you, but Nike’s Air Jordan. The movie aims to show how the branding of the shoe in 1984, when Michael Jordan had yet to play in the NBA, revolutionized the marketing of superstar athletes, not to mention enriching their bank accounts. As sports-centric movies go, it’s in the same vein, if not quite the same league, as “Moneyball” or “Ford v Ferrari.”    

Written by Alex Convery and directed by Ben Affleck, who also co-stars as Nike CEO Phil Knight, the film is unabashedly inspirational. Not since Cinderella’s slipper has a shoe borne so much metaphorical weight. For all the film’s rampant, easygoing humor, the Air Jordan is spotlighted as some kind of sacred artifact. Its creation is meant to signify not only a triumph of capitalist ingenuity but also a watershed moment in the culture.

The moviemakers sell their messaging and their uplift as strenuously as the Nike executives boost Air Jordans. Fortunately, the boosters and their allies are portrayed by crackerjack performers, including Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Matthew Maher, Julius Tennon, and Marlon Wayans. Without them, the movie might come across as glorified corporate self-congratulation. (Neither Nike nor Jordan, it should be noted, has any commercial connection to the film, though surely they will benefit from it.)

Damon’s Sonny Vaccaro is Nike’s basketball guru who comes up with the idea of pairing Jordan, a high school phenom and Olympic Games standout, with a specially designed shoe. He just has a “feeling” it will result in a huge triumph. Knight, who posts his Zen-like “10 Steps to Success” maxims in the executive boardroom, not unreasonably thinks Vaccaro is ridiculous. (Those 10 steps are periodically flashed on the screen as punctuation between scenes.)

Nike can’t afford Jordan, who already has turned down a meeting with them and wants to go with Adidas. It’s up to Vaccaro to change his mind. To do so, he realizes he will have to sidestep David Falk, Jordan’s attack-dog agent (played by a marvelously viperish Chris Messina) and win over the one person who can make it happen – Jordan’s mother, Deloris, played by Viola Davis at her no-nonsense best.

The role of Deloris is essentially a cameo, and yet she is the heart of the film. With Davis playing her, how could it be otherwise? (In his very brief on-screen appearances, Michael is wisely only shown from the back.) Deloris knows her son’s worth, and not just monetarily. Her solid-state stare can easily morph into a don’t-mess-with-me glower. She knows she holds all the negotiating cards. When she tells Nike that “a shoe is just a shoe, until my son steps into it,” her carefully chosen words have the weight of a biblical pronouncement.

 “Air” is so enjoyably crafted and acted that, at least while I was watching it, I wasn’t much bothered by its not-so-thinly disguised paeans to corporate bonanzas. But the script barely pays lip service to the sky-high cost of these shoes to kids who can’t afford them, or to the cheap labor from Asia that goes into manufacturing them.

It also doesn’t appear to recognize that the whole megabillion branding culture ushered in by the Air Jordan phenomenon isn’t quite the unequivocal boon to our lives that the film makes it out to be. The film itself is all of a piece with that win-win celebrity culture. The Nike maxims in “Air” are all about taking risks, but the movie doesn’t take enough of them.

If one argues that I am taking the movie too seriously, my response is that it fully encourages that reading. Vaccaro has an unironic speech where he practically touts Jordan as a messiah. The film wants to be a wing-ding entertainment, but it also strives to say Something Important. The first half of that equation is what makes the movie eminently worth watching. 

Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. “Air” opens in theaters on April 5. The film is rated R for language throughout.