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In the opening paragraph of her NY Times review, veteran critic Manohla Dargis writes "It’s ridiculous how entertaining “Air” is given that it’s about shoes, even if it works overtime to persuade you that it’s also about other, nobler truths, too. Mind you, the pair that Nike presented to Michael Jordan in a 1984 meeting were custom. The company wanted badly to sign Jordan to an endorsement deal, so it created black-and-red high tops with a white midsole and a multimillion-dollar sweetener. Jordan may have preferred Adidas, but he soon laced up for Nike, changing footwear, sports stardom and athletic marketing forever."
The film stars Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike exec who’s trying to sign a young Michael Jordan, along with Ben Affleck, who is also the film's director, and Viola Davis -- as Jordan's mom Deloris. In the vein of recent films about revolutionary men who changed the companies where they worked -- at this year's Berlinale there was of course Matthew Johnson's BlackBerry -- Air is as much about a story as it is about the era when that story took place, a time gone by when someone's dream required more effort than posting a selfie on social media. And most boys and girls wanted to grow up to be successful, change the world, not become Instagram influencers with fake lips and even faker lives.
The film was released in movie theaters just in time for the Bank Holiday in the UK and Easter/Passover in the US and is distributed by Amazon Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures. While most film critics missed the point of the film, in her typical fashion Dargis found its fuller meaning, especially as a testament to Nike's place in the firmament of sports wear, but also what Dargis calls "the larger racial stakes of the landmark deal," between Nike and Jordan's family -- or more precisely Delores. This is one of the reasons critics need context when writing and why Dargis is always heads above her competition.
Watch Air in theaters now.
