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• DVD & Streaming
• Biography/History , Drama , Sports

Content Caution

In Theaters

• April 5, 2023
• Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro; Ben Affleck as Phil Knight; Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser; Marlon Wayans as George Raveling; Chris Messina as David Falk; Chris Tucker as Howard White; Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan; Matthew Maher as Peter Moore; Julius Tennon as James R. Jordan Sr.

Home Release Date

• May 12, 2023
• Ben Affleck

Distributor

• Amazon Studios

Movie Review

Even though he was the third pick in 1984’s NBA draft, Michael Jordan was no sure thing. Just ask the guy who drafted him.

“We wish Jordan were 7 feet, but he isn’t,” said Chicago Bulls General Manager Rod Thorn. “There just wasn’t a center available. What can you do? Jordan isn’t going to turn this franchise around. I wouldn’t ask him to.”  

You can’t really blame him for his skepticism. Some people thought Jordan was too tall to be a shooting guard, too thin to be a power forward. They worried whether he could (ironically) shoot the ball. And even those who believed Jordan would become a great player, he’d be just one of many.

But in the movie Air , three people believed that Michael Jordan could become better than great.

One: Michael Jordan.

Two: his mom.

Three: Sonny Vaccaro, an executive for Nike, a company best known in 1984 for its running shoes.

In the world of basketball, Nike was barely on the map. Converse was the big dog. All the NBA’s best—from Magic Johnson to Larry Bird to Julius “Dr. J” Erving himself—wore them. Adidas was the trendsetting second fiddle, quickly becoming a brand darling in the hip-hop world. When he played college hoops at North Carolina, Jordan wore Converse on the court and loved his Adidas off it.

Nike? That brand that made shoes for jogging suburbanites? Puleeeze.

But Sonny watched the tape of Michael Jordan and saw greatness in the making. He had an audacious plan to bring the basketball guard into the Nike fold.

His job, his future and perhaps the fate of Nike itself hung in the balance of Sonny’s corporate equivalent of a half-court shot.

But hey, as some guy was destined to say, You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.

Some guy named Michael Jordan.

Positive Elements

It’s hard to quantify most of what we see in this movie as inherently good or bad—other than to say that some folks made good business decisions around a very good basketball player.

Still, Sonny hints at the adversity that Michael had to overcome to become that very good basketball player. Cut from his high school basketball team, Michael willed himself to greatness (Sonny says).

And we do see a strong work ethic in play, as well. Sonny and a couple of other associates spend all weekend at the office preparing for an important presentation. And when the day of the presentation comes and Sonny’s worried that he hasn’t done enough, Nike’s Director of Marketing Rob Strasser reminds Sonny that he’s only human. “Sometimes the most you can do is all you can do,” he tells him.

But Rob also reminds Sonny of what else is at stake if Sonny’s gambit doesn’t work: a lot of people’s jobs. Rob, who’s divorced, tells Sonny about his 7-year-old daughter, whom he only gets to see on Sunday afternoons. Every Sunday, he brings her a pair of Nikes as a way to show his love for her. And while we’d say (and Rob would admit) that these gifts smack a bit of bribery, Rob’s desire to connect with his daughter is real. If Rob gets fired (which’ll likely happen if Nike doesn’t sign Michael), Rob says he’ll likely still buy his daughter shoes as long as he can. It’s perhaps only then that Sonny realizes it’s not just his neck on the line: It’s an office-full of others. And maybe those necks are more important than his own.

From real-world clips, it’s clear that the real Michael Jordan loved his mother, and we see evidence of that love and respect in the movie, too.

Spiritual Elements

After Sonny spots something in Michael’s game tapes that make him sure that he’s the guy Nike needs to sign, he barges into Rob’s office. “I found him,” Sonny says.

“Who’ that, Jesus?” Rob asks facetiously.

It’s a throwaway line, and yet the movie gently suggests there’s something almost divine about Michael’s game. “Some things are eternal,” Sonny says, adding that Michael’s talents will be remembered long after he and everyone else at Nike are gone and forgotten.

Nike is named after the Greek goddess of victory. There’s a statue of a Buddha in Nike CEO Phil Knight’s office, and Sonny warns him not to rattle off any “Buddhist aphorisms.”

Sexual Content

David Falk, Michael Jordan’s agent, makes some very descriptive, somewhat sexually oriented threats toward Sonny when he believes the exec is going around his back. (He says, for instance, that he’ll have sex with Sonny’s skull.)

You see a few scandalous real-life flash-forward headlines about Michael Jordan—including some relating to his marital infidelity and divorce—land on screen.

Violent Content

Again, through headlines seen very briefly on screen, we learn that Michael’s father will ultimately be shot to death.

Crude or Profane Language

Phil Knight mentions that the name Nike was chosen because focus groups showed a preference for four-letter words. “I like four-letter words,” Sonny adds.

Boy, does he. And boy, so do a lot of other people. The f-word is used at least 65 times. The s-word is spoken another 16 times. And we also hear numerous uses of “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss”. God’s name is misused three times, once with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

A couple of characters drink and talk at a bar.

Other Negative Elements

In his push to sign Michael Jordan to a contract, Sonny also pushes into some questionably unethical territory. He bypasses Michael’s agent. He commits Nike financially to more than his boss agreed upon. When that boss, Phil Knight, accuses Sonny of rampant egoism, Sonny points out that Phil’s the only guy in the company who drives a grape-purple Porsche.

Sonny also regularly takes business-trip detours to Las Vegas and gambles heavily. We see a scene of him playing craps. Headlines remind us of Jordan’s own gambling habit. We hear that the late founder of Adidas was a member of the Hitler Youth Corps. A conversation takes place in the bathroom. We hear references to the alleged unfair labor practices Nike used to make its shoes.

The Michael Jordan/Nike partnership is considered one of the most revolutionary, and lucrative, relationships in sports history. Both the player and the shoe company have profited enormously together, and both continue to make crates full of money from the deal—even though Jordan retired 20 years ago.

The real charm in Air —besides, of course, its boardroom full of top-notch actors and totally awesome 1980s soundtrack—is rewinding the clock, to when Michael Jordan was an unproven NBA rookie and Nike was just a scrappy shoemaker. In fact, the only one that Jordan refused to even consider . It’s a fascinating story. And even if we’re just told one exaggerated side of it (the Internet will disgorge a host of other sides if you ask), there’s no question that the Oscar-winning Ben Affleck knows how to direct a powerful, engaging film. That’s only fitting, I suppose, given the powerful, engaging athlete at its center.

But it’s fitting in another way, too.

Give Jordan his props as perhaps the greatest basketball player—and one of the greatest athletes—of all time. But we know that the same competitive fire that drove Jordan to greatness could make him, sometimes, kind of a jerk. His ledger is filled not just with highlight-reel shots, but tawdry headlines. Sonny tells us that Americans love to build up our heroes and tear them down, but let’s be honest: Our heroes are often complicit in their own deconstruction.

Air , too, can soar—surprisingly high, considering its most riveting scenes take place in Nike’s boardrooms and cubicles. But when it falls, it hits hard. The language can be as blue as the original Air Jordan shoe (which, in a bit of poetic license, the film suggests started out red). Some of the ethics we see aren’t as praiseworthy as the film would like us to believe.

Jordan once famously said that he’s missed more than 9,000 shots in his career—including 26 would-be game winners. Air misses its share of shots as well. Does it miss enough to lose your game? The scoreboard won’t tell you.

Only you can decide.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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“Air” bristles with the infectious energy of the man at its center: Sonny Vaccaro, who’s hustling to make the deal of a lifetime.

Of course, we know from the start that the former Nike executive succeeded: Michael Jordan became a superstar and arguably the greatest basketball player in the history of the game. And the Air Jordan, the shoe that gives the film its title, became the best-known and most-coveted sneaker of all time.

So how do you tell a story to which we already know the outcome? That’s where the deceptive brilliance of Ben Affleck ’s directing lies. His fifth feature is much in the same vein as the previous movies he’s helmed: “ Gone Baby Gone ,” “ The Town ,” “ Argo ” (which earned him a best-picture Oscar) and “Live By Night.” He makes the kind of solid, mid-budget movies for grown-ups that are far too rare these days. Affleck emphasizes strong writing, veteran performers and venerable behind-the-scenes craftspeople. His choice in cinematographer, longtime Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino collaborator Robert Richardson , is a prime example.

With “Air,” it all comes together in an enormously entertaining package—one that’s old-fashioned but also alive and crowd-pleasing. Working from a sharp and snappy script by Alex Convery , Affleck tells the story of how Nike nabbed Jordan by creating a shoe that wasn’t just for him but of him—the representation of his soon-to-be iconic persona in a form that made us feel as if we, too, could reach such heights. This probably makes “Air” sound like a two-hour sneaker commercial. It is not. If you love movies about process, about people who are good at their jobs, then you’ll find yourself enthralled by the film’s many moments inside offices, conference rooms, and production labs.

The interactions within those mundane spaces make “Air” such a joy, starting with the reteaming of Affleck and Matt Damon . It’s a blast watching these longtime best friends, co-stars, and co-writers playing off each other again, provoking and cajoling, more than a quarter century after “ Good Will Hunting .” Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike recruiting expert who recognized the young North Carolina guard as a once-in-a-generation talent and pursued him relentlessly to keep him from Converse and Adidas cooler brands. Affleck is Nike co-founder and former CEO Phil Knight, an intriguing mix of Zen calm and corporate arrogance. He walks around the office barefoot, yet he drives a Porsche he insists is not purple but rather grape in hue. Vaccaro, as his friend and colleague from the company’s earliest days, is the only one who can speak truth to power, and the affection and friction of that camaraderie shine through.

The year is 1984 (boy, is it ever—more on that in a minute), and Nike’s basketball division is an afterthought within the Oregon-based running shoe company. Nike is also an also-ran among its competitors. Vaccaro, a doughy, middle-aged bulldog in various puddy-colored Members Only jackets (the on-point work of costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones ), knows Jordan can change all that, and most “Air” consists of him convincing everyone around him of that notion. That includes director of marketing Rob Strasser ( Jason Bateman , whose mastery of dry, rat-a-tat banter is the perfect fit for this material); player-turned-executive Howard White (an amusingly fast-talking Chris Tucker ); Jordan’s swaggering agent, David Falk ( Chris Messina , who nearly steals the whole movie with one hilariously profane telephone tirade); and finally, Jordan’s proud and protective mother, Deloris ( Viola Davis , whose arrival provides the film with a new level of weight and wisdom). Character actor Matthew Maher , who always brings an intriguing presence to whatever film he’s in, stands out as Nike’s idiosyncratic shoe design guru, Peter Moore.

“Air” is a timeless underdog story of grit, dreams, and moxie. In that spirit, Vaccaro delivers a killer monologue at a crucial moment in hopes of sealing the deal with Jordan (whom Affleck shrewdly never shows us full-on—he remains an elusive idea, as he should be, but an intoxicating bit of crosscutting reveals the legacy he’ll leave over time). Still, Affleck very much hammers home the fact that we are in the mid-1980s. Sometimes, the evocation of this period comes in subtle and amusing ways, as in a throwaway joke about Kurt Rambis that made me chuckle. (You don’t have to know anything about basketball in general or this era in particular to enjoy the film, but there are many extra pleasures if you do.) More often, though, Affleck aims to create nostalgia with nearly wall-to-wall needle drops and overbearing pop culture references. As if the lengthy opening montage consisting of Cabbage Patch Kids, Hulk Hogan , the “Where’s the Beef?” ad, President Reagan, Princess Diana, and more weren’t enough, he randomly throws in a Rubik’s Cube or a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards as a transitional device. And the soundtrack of ‘80s hits is such a constant it becomes distracting, from the Violent Femmes and Dire Straits to Cyndi Lauper and Chaka Khan to a truly baffling use of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” as Knight is simply pulling into the Nike parking lot.

Still, this is a minor quibble about a movie that, for the most part, is as smooth and reliable as one of Jordan’s buzzer-beating, fadeaway jumpers.

Now playing on Prime today, May 12th.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Rated R for language throughout.

112 minutes

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro

Ben Affleck as Phil Knight

Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser

Marlon Wayans as George Raveling

Chris Messina as David Falk

Chris Tucker as Howard White

Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan

Julius Tennon as James Jordan

Damian Young as Michael Jordan

Matthew Maher as Peter Moore

Gustaf Skarsgård as Horst Dassler

Barbara Sukowa as Kathy Dassler

Jay Mohr as John Fisher

• Ben Affleck
• Alex Convery

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• Robert Richardson
• William Goldenberg

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'air'.

Bob Mondello

Ben Affleck directs the story of how a small athletic shoe maker cracked the big time in 1984 by introducing a shoe for an untested rookie named Michael Jordan.

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What to Know

A fact-based drama that no one will dunk on, Air aims to dramatize events that changed the sports world forever -- and hits almost nothing but net.

Ben Affleck and a terrific cast score with Air , which is much more entertaining than any movie about a long-ago business deal has any right to be.

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Ben Affleck

Sonny Vaccaro

Phil Knight

Jason Bateman

Rob Strasser

Viola Davis

Deloris Jordan

Chris Messina

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‘Air’ Knows Exactly What It Is

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s story of Nike’s paradigm-shifting deal with Michael Jordan is both a great time at the theater and an odd valorization of an already all-powerful brand

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History is written by the winners, and Ben Affleck’s glossy new docudrama, Air , about Nike’s unlikely and ultimately paradigm-shifting shoe deal with a lanky shooting guard named Michael Jordan, is the cinematic equivalent of a victory lap. There’s a recurring joke in Alex Convery’s screenplay that, circa 1984, Nike was best known for its comfy workout apparel. Air works nicely on those terms, as a limber, vigorous jog over familiar territory.

Phil Knight (Affleck) isn’t just the company’s CEO, he’s his own best customer, cruising through suburban Portland in an array of colorful tracksuits. When he gets to the office, he stares down his basketball division’s downward sales curve while Run-DMC trumpets the greatness of their Adidas . Thirsty for market share, Knight instructs in-house hoops guru Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) to get thrifty and creative with a minuscule $250,000 budget. Ideally, the amount is to be split among three potential spokesmen, but Sonny, who’s got a paunch and a gambling problem, wants to blow the whole wad (and more) on Jordan, whose game he deconstructs, Zapruder-film style, en route to the unshakable belief that the kid is the next big thing.

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Sonny is driven by the poetic, distinctly nonutilitarian idea that the shoe matters less than the person who wears it. He doesn’t know it yet, but his philosophy shrewdly anticipates the larger cults of personality that would come to define American pop culture in the ’80s, ’90s, and beyond—the idea that people everywhere would pay a premium if they could be like Mike . We, of course, do know it, and the pleasures and the limitations of Air are bound up in the essential, irresistible frictionlessness of this 20/20 hindsight. Suspense and drama become subordinate to a kind of cozy superiority: The big moments have the exhilaration of windmill dunking on a 6-foot rim. Points are scored on broad pop-cultural reference points from WrestleMania to “Where’s the Beef?,” and characters’ trustworthiness is marked by how they talk about NBA stars whose legacies are long since settled (all that’s missing is a line about Sam Bowie being the next Kareem).

Such audience-flattering high jinks are de rigueur in movies of this type, and Air , to its credit , knows exactly what it is. With carefully curated production design and sterile, fluorescent aesthetics—a kind of ambient boardroom hum punctuated by a string of reliable I-Love-the-’80s bangers—Affleck’s film belongs to a contemporary subgenre of corporate origin myths whose gold standard is probably The Social Network . But there’s another, even more specific influence here in the form of Moneyball , itself a sort of Social Network clone, right down to the Aaron Sorkin script. The common denominator across the three movies is the presence of self-styled disruptors reshaping various industries in their image—a rare and potent opportunity to yoke together seemingly opposed values of subversion and success.

If The Social Network plays like a millennial Citizen Kane , Air is closer to the light and satisfying sensation of reading a Wikipedia article while shuffling through a good playlist. Affleck isn’t a masterful filmmaker—or a subversive one—but he has a gift for pacing and working with actors. He got superb performances out of Michelle Monaghan and his younger brother, Casey, in Gone Baby Gone , one of the more impressively fatalistic Hollywood thrillers of recent years; it powers through its own clunky plot mechanics to a nearly wordless final scene whose pathos and ambiguity have a distinct ’70s inflection. Meanwhile, the good parts of The Town are probably better than you remember, from the bullet-riddled action set pieces to the scenery-chewing bits from a ferocious Jon Hamm to a mesmerizing Pete Postlethwaite . Like Gone Baby Gone , The Town is derivative—it’s basically “We Have Heat at Home”—but it’s got a solid, old-school dramatic infrastructure that holds up even as the script keeps heaping on profundity; the same canny, alert instincts that make Affleck a good actor prevent his filmmaking from getting soggy. And the movie’s final scene, in which the director-star’s exiled antihero stares meaningfully across a lake while sporting a brand-new beard—you know, for chin stroking—is delectably macho camp.

Depending on your point of view, Argo ’s fast-and-loose playing with the facts of the so-called Canadian Caper, in which the CIA used the production of a fake science-fiction movie to facilitate the extraction of hostages from Tehran, was either part and parcel of its placating, crowd-pleasing packaging of deep state triumphalism or part of its satirical allegory about Hollywood’s colonizing of the popular imagination. The final scene, showing a child’s bedroom lined with Star Wars figurines, serves as a witty punctuation mark. The historical stakes in Air are lower, but the movie is even more playfully self-reflexive when it comes to the topic of filmmaking: Affleck and Damon are releasing it under the banner of their new independent production company, Artists Equity, which will strive to reroute back-end profits from streaming to below-the-line talent. Air argues that by giving Jordan a piece of his own sneaker sales, Nike was ahead of the current player empowerment curve—a detail that dovetails conceptually with Affleck’s new startup and informs his endearingly dorky performance as Knight, who famously sold sneakers out of his Plymouth in the 1960s en route to a personal net worth of $46.7 billion today.

Since his ingenious casting in Gone Girl , Affleck has consistently fused elements of his bruised, hangdog celebrity with impressive technique. Consider The Last Duel , in which he conjured up Dazed and Confused levels of repugnance beneath a bottle-blond dye job and douchey goatee . There, he bickered entertainingly with Damon in a sort of anti– Good Will Hunting satire; in Air , he and Damon spend most of the time pumping each other up, and the chemistry between them is undeniable. Damon carries the movie, and Affleck adorns it; his role as Knight riffs on both his indie roots and contemporary neo-mogul status while giving affable, sympathetic shading to a cipher whose extensive résumé as a philanthropist includes significant contributions to conservative causes that a Hollywood liberal like Affleck would surely blanch at.

“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Jordan famously said in 1990, a deathless, deeply revealing one-liner that was futilely recast in 2020’s The Last Dance as an off-the-cuff joke. Because Jordan isn’t really a character in Air (he’s seen mostly from behind or in profile, with only a few cursory lines of dialogue), the film doesn’t have to worry about idealizing his persona, but the specter of hagiography—not just of Jordan, but of Knight and his employees—still hovers over the proceedings. The near-religious reverence that Sonny has for his potential client is one thing, but telling the story of Nike’s courtship means making underdog folk heroes out of six-figure executives, billionaire CEOs, and their marketing departments, most of whom are white-skinned and white-collared, scanning African American demographics for potential profit margins.

It’s worth asking whether the kind of self-awareness that puts a handsome director in a goofy tracksuit and curly wig is enough. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter , Affleck, who has played golf with Jordan and reportedly took his suggestion to cast Viola Davis as his mother, Deloris, credited his once-and-eternal better half Jennifer Lopez with hipping him to the project’s urgent and endlessly complex sociological subtext. “She is incredibly knowledgeable about the way fashion evolves through the culture as a confluence of music, sports, entertainment and dance,” Affleck said. “She helped me in talking about the way in which a part of the reason why Jordans [the shoes] were so meaningful is because culture and style in America is 90 percent driven by Black culture. … In this case, [Nike], a white-run corporate entity, was starting to do business with African American athletes in an identity affiliation sales thing.”

Affleck ultimately proves savvy about these issues on-screen, deploying a series of slick and thoroughly self-congratulatory storytelling decisions to cover his bases. Before decamping to Wilmington to personally lobby Deloris, Sonny confers with a pair of Black friends and colleagues, Howard White (Chris Tucker) and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), who effectively bless his pilgrimage so that there’s no lingering ambivalence about his methods or motives. Tucker, who reportedly helped to rewrite his own dialogue, contributes a funny, relaxed performance that gives his scenes a lift. Wayans, though, can’t quite overcome the symbolism of his role as Raveling juxtaposes his participation in the civil rights movement—and his ownership of the original draft of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech—with Sonny’s brand-oriented quest. In The Hateful Eight , when Samuel L. Jackson’s Marquis Warren claims to have a letter from Abraham Lincoln in his back pocket as a get-out-of-racism-free card, it’s a satirical gambit with a devastating punch line. Here, the idea that Raveling’s anecdote about Dr. King’s oratory inspired Sonny’s improvised 11th-hour pitch is sincere, and sincerely disingenuous.

Is it fair to hold Air to any kind of rigorous ideological standard? After all, it’s not as if The Social Network is a particularly progressive piece of work, and it proved shortsighted about the real consequences of Facebook. Read in the broadest possible strokes, Affleck’s film has real acuity about different elements of sports, culture, and industry: It understands how Jordan’s individual brilliance transcended his sport and seduced a generation of consumers; it cares about the engineering and ingenuity that went into making Air Jordans, with Matthew Maher channeling genuine outsider-artist vibes as the eccentric designer Peter Moore; and it pays respect to deep-seated American ideas about risk and reward. But there’s also something ultimately try-hard about it that’s difficult to reconcile, a lingering sense of a desire to have its platitudes and smirk at them too.

In one crucial scene, Sonny’s pal and colleague Rob Strasser (an excellent Jason Bateman) talks about listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” over and over again without really listening to the lyrics, and then finally cluing into the fact that the song he’s been using to psych himself up is a withering critique of jingoism sung from the sardonic, wounded vantage of a Vietnam vet with his back against the wall. In 1984, Ronald Reagan tried to use “Born in the U.S.A.” as a campaign song—a hymn to faith and optimism with power chords. In response, Springsteen suggested the president listen to Nebraska ’s “Johnny 99,” a chilling parable of job loss, alcoholism, and violence.

Surely Affleck knows all this, which is why Air ’s use of “Born in the U.S.A.” over its closing where-are-they-now montage is so fascinating and so vexing. Having already established that the song’s patriotism is a sleight of hand—and that its meaning lies with the listener—Affleck proceeds to use it more or less straight-facedly behind information and images testifying to the heroism and decency of his real-life dramatic subjects, including Knight, whose various charitable causes are inventoried in great detail. He also includes a strange, funny little scene of himself as Knight pocketing a granola bar from the Nike cafeteria without paying. Everything about the sequence hints at some troubling, unspoken tension between what we’re seeing and what it means, but not to the point where it actually changes the material’s meaning: It’s irony without teeth, and it wouldn’t know who to bite if it could. The main takeaways from Air are that an essentially faceless corporation found a way to humanize itself through a perfectly chosen surrogate superhero, and that the middle-aged dudes who made the pick were visionaries—cool rocking daddies in the U.S.A. But when you’re watching such a triumphant capitalist fable of market dominance, another Springsteen lyric comes to mind: “A king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.”

Adam Nayman is a film critic, teacher, and author based in Toronto; his book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together is available now from Abrams.

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Air Has More Substance Than You’d Expect

Ben Affleck manages to turn a mega-company’s best-known win into an actually suspenseful story.

Air faces a steep challenge, in terms of winning its audience over. Ben Affleck’s film, set in the mid-1980s, wants viewers to root for Nike—yes, that Nike, the shoe company, the one that’s done pretty well for itself over the past few decades. Will these plucky Oregon underdogs box out their rivals and achieve success by selling a Michael Jordan–branded shoe? The answer to that question seems to be a fairly uncomplicated “yes,” so credit goes to Affleck, his screenwriter Alex Convery, and his star Matt Damon for conveying what it was like to create the Air Jordan brand.

More than a decade ago, Affleck solidified his reputation as a serious auteur with Oscar-lauded films such as The Town and Argo . Then, in 2016, his leaden Live by Night performance underscored just how much his skills had migrated to directing and away from being a movie star. Yet, for years after that, Affleck was bogged down in the DC Comics universe, playing a very grumpy Batman. Air is a great return to Affleck’s original impulses as a director: It’s a fun, well-made film for grown-ups that gives its actors room to flesh out their characters and, most important, doesn’t rely on Affleck’s star persona.

Here, he’s filling a supporting role that recalls his performance in The Last Duel , a medieval epic from 2021 that he co-wrote with Nicole Holofcener and Damon, who assumed the lead role. Affleck played a bored lordling, dispensing advice and funds to the other characters while remaining above their foibles. In Air , Affleck plays Phil Knight, the Nike CEO who was once known as a renegade but, by the mid-’80s, had become yet another restless mogul; he dawdles in a cavernous office wearing wraparound sunglasses and longing for excitement.

Luckily, excitement arrives—in the form of corporate competitors, frenzied phone calls, and, eventually, the invention of a new kind of personal branding. Air is about one of the most obvious business decisions in the world: monetizing an amazing basketball player on the rise, whose athleticism and fame could function as a self-sustaining advertisement for an ever-expanding product line. Many viewers will be at least dimly aware of the Michael Jordan shoes’ longtime popularity. Air , however, introduces some suspense by rendering the Nike headquarters as a dinky backwater, a mess of cubicles staffed by middle-aged businessmen clinging to relevance.

Sonny Vaccaro (played by Damon) is the king of that schlubby brigade, a marketing executive struggling to launch Nike into the basketball world, at that time dominated by Converse and Adidas. He sees Jordan, a college star about to enter the NBA, as a potential savior, and he convinces Phil to offer Jordan the company’s entire athlete budget rather than spreading it around to a bunch of mid-tier players. But that budget isn’t big enough for the prodigy. Affleck primarily focuses on the interplay between business and personal as Sonny tries to win over Jordan by both increasing the bid and appealing to the athlete’s mother, Deloris (Viola Davis).

Read: The mythos of Michael Jordan continues

By and large, Air is an energetic corporate comedy, full of top-shelf talent. Damon plays Sonny as a lovable nag who needles everyone around him into action. Jason Bateman is perfectly hangdog as his boss, Rob Strasser, and Chris Tucker turns up the fast-talking banter as Sonny’s office-mate, Howard White. Chris Messina delivers about 15 minutes of blistering, profanity-filled speeches as Jordan’s bullheaded agent David Falk, who wants to stop the athlete from signing with what he perceives as an uncool brand. These are all serious stars who can deliver witty patter effortlessly, but Affleck (unsurprisingly a consummate actor’s director) lets them take their time, keeping the camera still for every major monologue as they tease out their personal motivations.

The film shines best during the conferences between Sonny and Deloris. Both characters believe that a sneaker collab could transform society—that Jordan is not just a good basketball player but an inspirational force as well. Sonny has put significant financial backing on the line and is eager to validate that decision, whereas Deloris is more invested in her son’s long-term future than in one big payday. Watching Damon’s devout intensity bump up against Davis’s calm assuredness is an understated thrill. Air mainly takes place in drab offices, yet the cast’s expert performances transform those spaces much in the same way that Michael Jordan transformed courts and sneaker racks—by turning them into sites of magic.

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

‘Air’ shoots and scores, with story, character, catharsis and depth

We all know how the tale of Michael Jordan and Nike ends up, but Ben Affleck’s film about it is a smart and entertaining delight

“Air,” Ben Affleck’s funny, moving and surprisingly meaningful tale of how Nike came to create Air Jordan basketball shoes, might have been a real snore. We all know how the story ends, and do we really need a movie that perpetuates yet another David-and-Goliath myth about a world-dominating corporation?

Apparently, the answer is yes: Working from a well-judged script by first-time screenwriter Alex Convery and enlisting a superb cast of appealing ensemble players, Affleck has created something that Hollywood has seemed incapable of making in recent years: a smart, entertaining movie that, for all its foregone conclusions and familiar beats, unfolds with the offhand confidence of the most casually impressive layup.

The key to any story, especially one the audience already thinks it knows, is choosing the right donkey — the person who will not only lead us through the plot but make us care. Enter Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike talent scout who, as the movie opens, is working college games and nursing a compulsive gambling habit. “Air” begins in the 1980s, shortly after the company has gone public; although co-founder Phil Knight had attained a 50 percent market share in the athletic shoe market, in basketball he was trailing behind Converse and Adidas. During the era of Rolodexes, Rubik’s Cubes, Reagan and rappers — all of which are name-checked in “Air’s” snappy opening montage set to Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” — Nike’s hippest product was tracksuits, not sneakers.

Sonny’s colleagues at Nike, including marketing executive Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), field rep Howard White (Chris Tucker) and Knight (Affleck), seem to have accepted their lot as also-rans when Sonny suggests betting their entire sponsorship budget on the young North Carolina phenom Michael Jordan. What ensues might best be described as “Jerry Maguire” meets “King Richard,” as Sonny goes head to head with his bosses, Jordan’s fast-talking agent (Chris Messina), and the ultimate decision-maker and toughest negotiator of them all: Jordan’s mother, Deloris.

Affleck has said in interviews that Michael Jordan had only one stipulation in the making of “Air”: that Viola Davis would play Deloris. Affleck granted that request, and when Davis enters the proceedings, the weather changes. Up until her appearance, Damon, Bateman, Tucker and Affleck — who as Knight drives an absurd purple Porsche, wears goofy running get-ups and spouts corny New Age aphorisms — keep the balloon afloat with pacey jocularity and a slick, fast-moving business story. Once Sonny goes to North Carolina to meet Deloris and James Jordan (the latter is played by Davis’s real-life husband, Julius Tennon), “Air” transforms from a worthy if conventional underdog tale to the chronicle of a seismic cultural shift.

“Air” is that rare sports movie that is virtually guaranteed to appeal to both hardcore NBA fans and people who don’t know a three-point line from a field goal (thanks, Wikipedia!). The key, of course, is the human factor, here channeled through consistently relaxed, irresistibly likable performances, especially from Damon at his most relatably chunky, Davis at her most serenely commanding, Bateman (alternately quippy and disarmingly sincere), and Affleck, who between this and 2021’s “The Last Duel” might deserve an honorary acting Oscar for being willing to make himself look utterly ridiculous for the greater good.

As a director, he’s also willing to indulge the audience’s craving for pleasure, whether by way of “Air’s” thoroughly rewarding plot or delicious period-piece touches, which include an ’80s-tastic soundtrack and the re-creation of Nike’s Beaverton, Ore., headquarters, where smoking corners and sundae bars are the order of the long-bygone day. (He also wisely shoots the actor playing Jordan only from behind, avoiding inevitable and distracting comparisons.)

Spouting his own aphorism, at one point Sonny reminds his colleagues that “you’re remembered for the rules you break.” Affleck doesn’t break rules with “Air” as much as restore them, obeying principles that have seemed mortally endangered in recent years — about sound structure, recognizably human characters, satisfying catharsis, authentic but not overreaching depth. The modest but gratifying gifts of “Air” lie in its seeming effortlessness, reassuring viewers that a good movie can still be a good story, well told. It’s a movie that shoots and scores. And, miraculously, it turns out that’s still enough.

R. At area theaters. Contains strong language throughout. 112 minutes.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan.

• Ben Affleck
• Alex Convery
• Jason Bateman
• 425 User reviews
• 271 Critic reviews
• 73 Metascore
• 5 wins & 47 nominations

• Sonny Vaccaro

• Rob Strasser

• Phil Knight

• Deloris Jordan

• James Jordan

• Michael Jordan
• (as Damian Young)

• Howard White

• Peter Moore

• Horst Dassler

• Kathe Dassler

• John Fisher

• John O'Neill

• George Raveling
• 7-Eleven Clerk

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Big Cars, Big Dreams With the 'Air' Cast

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Did you know

• Trivia Though Michael Jordan was not directly involved in the film, Ben Affleck consulted him numerous times to get details on how to accurately portray the story. According to Affleck, Jordan's only two requests were that Viola Davis play his mother and that his longtime friend Howard White be included in the film. Affleck always wanted to work with Chris Tucker , so he was cast as White. Tucker was also friends with White, and Affleck gave him a lot of flexibility for his performance.
• Goofs The "Just Do It" slogan didn't come out until 1987. It was created in 1987 by Wieden + Kennedy to accompany Nike's first major television campaign, which included commercials for running, walking, cross-training, basketball and women's fitness.

Sonny Vaccaro : [to Michael Jordan] Forget about the shoes, forget about the money. You're going to make enough money, it's not going to matter. Money can buy you almost anything, it can't buy you immortality. That, you have to earn. I'm going to look you in the eyes and I'm gonna tell you the future. You were cut from your high school basketball team. You willed your way to the NBA. You're gonna win championships. It's an American story, and that's why Americans are gonna love it. People are going to build you up, and God are they going to, because when you're great and new, we love you. Man, we'll build you up into something that doesn't even exist. You're going to change the fucking world. But you know what? Once they've built you as high as they possibly can, they're gonna tear you back down - it's the most predictable pattern. We build you into something that doesn't exist, and that means you have to try to be that thing all day, every day. That's how it works. And we do it again, and again, and again. And I'm going to tell you the truth. You're going to be attacked, betrayed, exposed and humiliated. And you'd survive that. A lot of people can climb that mountain. It's the way down that breaks them, 'cause that's the moment when you are truly alone. And what would you do then? Can you summon the will to fight on, through all the pain, and rise again? Who are you Michael? That will be the defining question of your life. And I think you already know the answer, and that's why we're all here. A shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it. Then it has meaning. The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness. We need you in these shoes not so you have meaning in your life, but so that we have meaning in ours. Everyone at this table will be forgotten as soon as our time here is up - except for you. You're gonna be remembered forever, because some things are eternal. You're Michael Jordan, and your story is gonna make us want to fly.

• Connections Featured in CBS News Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley: Episode #45.26 (2023)
• Soundtracks Money for Nothing Written by Mark Knopfler , Sting (as Gordon Matthew Sumner) Performed by Dire Straits Courtesy of Warner Records By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User reviews 425

• trevorwomble
• Apr 7, 2023
• How long is Air? Powered by Alexa
• April 5, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Los Angeles, California, USA
• Amazon Studios
• Artists Equity
• Mandalay Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $90,000,000 (estimated)
• $52,460,106
• $14,456,279
• Apr 9, 2023
• $90,060,106

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Review: Ben Affleck’s entertaining Michael Jordan-Nike drama is more than hot ‘Air’

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One of the pleasures of the movies is the way they can complicate and undermine the idea of history as destiny, taking unbeatable sure things and reminding us that they were once untested, unknown quantities. It’s not, admittedly, the easiest thing for a filmmaker to pull off. Too often the clarity of hindsight can become the enemy of real drama; the more phenomenal the legend, the more inevitable and even circumscribed their success can seem. There’s a moment near the end of “Air,” Ben Affleck’s shrewd, hugely enjoyable and fitfully ruminative new movie, that deftly gets at this point, when a basketball fan opines that “everybody knew” from the beginning that Michael Jordan would be an all-timer — never mind that, sometime earlier, said fan could be heard declaring precisely the opposite.

Not that “Air” treats Jordan as some kind of underdog, or even as its central subject. An NBA rookie when the movie opens, he’s already marked for greatness — a greatness of such untouchable, godlike proportions that, beyond some TV footage of the real Jordan on the court, the movie dares not even show his face. (Damian Delano Young, the actor who plays him, appears only briefly and is almost always filmed from behind.) No, the truer underdog here — and the other legend in the making — is Nike, the upstart Oregon-based footwear company with the swoosh logo, the “just do it” slogan and an initially lackluster profile in the basketball sneaker market. That last part will change forever, of course, once Nike manages, through a campaign of extraordinary savvy and daring, to outbid and outmaneuver its deeper-pocketed rivals, Adidas and Converse, and hitch its own fortunes to Jordan’s meteoric rise.

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Boasting a punchy, phone-slamming, expletive-hurling, heavily Aaron Sorkin-indebted script by Alex Convery, “Air” is an ode to the art of the landmark celebrity-endorsement deal . It’s also something of a feature-length Nike commercial, albeit a deft and entertaining one. Mostly, it’s a tribute to classically American values like branding and publicity, ambition and swagger, wealth and more wealth (the Air Jordan line has earned billions and counting) and good, old-fashioned competitive cunning. Like “Argo” (2012), Affleck’s Oscar-winning hit about how Hollywood helped rescue six Americans amid the turmoil of the Iran hostage crisis, the movie dusts off decades-old headlines and invests them with the breezy urgency of a comic heist thriller, one with far lower human stakes but an incalculably higher payout. The year may be 1984, but any hint of Orwellian gloom here is dissolved in a wave of merry capitalist brinkmanship.

The mastermind is Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, paunchy and polo-shirted), the sharpest, most stubborn mind in Nike’s flailing basketball division. Possessed of a keen understanding of the game and its players, he also has a gambler’s streak that loses him more than it earns. (His talent-scouting trips tend to detour through Las Vegas, where the script establishes his risky impulses and drops a sly beaut of a Kurt Rambis joke.) It’s Sonny who grasps and articulates the singularity of Jordan’s brilliance a few crucial beats before everyone else does. And it’s Sonny who argues that Nike, rather than dividing its annual $250,000 basketball budget among three or four lower-ranked players, should offer the whole pot to Jordan and tailor an entire shoe line to the athlete, rather than the other way around. (Matthew Maher, so good in last year’s “Funny Pages,” steals a few scenes as Nike shoe wizard Peter Moore, who designs the Air Jordan in all its prototypical Chicago Bulls red-and-black glory.)

It’s a potentially game-changing proposition — and a potentially business-killing gamble. Sonny has a lot of skeptics to convince, including Jordan, a die-hard Adidas fan, and (more importantly) Jordan’s mother, Deloris, the solid rock and gently guiding hand behind his every career move. Deloris is played, superbly, by Viola Davis, whose soft-toned, gravel-edged voice is authority itself. (In a nice touch, Davis’ husband, Julius Tennon , plays Michael’s father, James Jordan.) Two of the movie’s most beautifully written and played scenes find Sonny approaching and later negotiating with a thoughtful, quietly unyielding Deloris, setting the pattern for a story in which nearly every turning point is structured as a two-way conversation — a one-on-one master class in the art of persuasion.

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Sonny’s many sparring partners include Jordan’s potty-mouthed agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, a scream), and Nike’s good-natured but beaten-down marketing director, Rob Strasser (an effective Jason Bateman). Strasser gets a poignant if overly calculated heart-tugger of a speech that kicks “Air’s” already solid dad-movie cred up several notches; he also gets one of the script’s few moments — an oblique reference to Nike’s use of Asian sweatshop labor — that puncture the feel-good corporate vibes.

Most of those vibes emanate from the company’s affable, Zen-minded CEO, Phil Knight, a wearer of track suits and spouter of Buddhist koans played by Affleck himself as the risk-averse yin to Sonny’s reckless yang. Unsurprisingly, the well-worn Matt-and-Ben screen rapport gives Sonny and Phil an instantly readable, affectionately combative dynamic, as well as an understated emotional core.

It’s not the only time Affleck uses casting to suggestive, even subversive ends. On the surface, “Air” may look like an unrepentant valentine to the ’80s, from the amusing overkill of its extended opening montage (President Reagan and Princess Diana , Ghostbusters and Cabbage Patch Kids) to its steady stream of Violent Femmes/Cyndi Lauper/Bruce Springsteen needle drops to the simultaneously spot-on and comically exaggerated ugliness of its offices, all dim greenish lighting and chunky computer hardware. (The grubbily ancient production design is by François Audouy, the cubicle-panning cinematography by Robert Richardson.) But in some ways, the movie is also carrying on a subliminal, more subtly nostalgic conversation with the ’90s , the decade that transformed Affleck and Damon into household names and saw some of their key supporting players here first rise to prominence.

The latter include Marlon Wayans, delivering a charming cameo as George Raveling, the Olympic basketball coach who would prove instrumental in persuading Jordan to sign with Nike; and Chris Tucker , funneling his motormouthed comic gusto into the smart suit and warm, welcoming vibes of Howard White, the future vice president of the entire Jordan brand. In ways that sometimes register more potently than the action or dialogue, “Air” is haunted by the specters of these actors’ career highs and lows; this is Tucker’s first movie in seven years. It’s also haunted by the sight of Affleck and Damon, two aging Hollywood golden boys who at times seem to be confronting their own mortality alongside their characters. They’ve made a movie about the ravages of time, the fleeting, sometimes arbitrary nature of fame and the general rule of failure to which success proves an all-too-rare exception.

This meta-melancholy subtext rises to the surface late in the movie, when Sonny delivers a deal-clinching, throat-tightening boardroom speech about how few legacies endure and how few legends are remembered. It’s a message that consoles and stings, not least for the way it seems to knock even movie royalty down a few pegs. Success and fame on the level of a Michael Jordan, Sonny reminds us, has a way of throwing even great accomplishments into perspective.

“Air” comes by these ideas honestly and thoughtfully, and they’re rich enough that you sometimes wish Affleck and Convery had given them freer, unrulier reign, rather than shoehorning them (so to speak) into all the story’s busily, efficiently moving parts, its blue Slurpee sight gags and Adidas-skewering Hitler jokes. Crucially, it’s in the scenes with Wayans, Tucker and Davis that the movie engages meaningfully, if too briefly, with the role of race in the overlapping arenas of sports, celebrity and social progress, and especially the question of what Black athletes are owed by an industry that uses their names, likenesses and talent to invest a product with meaning.

Unsurprisingly, it’s Deloris who brings these issues to the fore — and also cuts through them with clean, unerring logic — when she argues for a fundamental shift in the balance of power between her son and Nike, and by extension between all athletes and the companies seeking to trade on their fame. The movie is on her side — or rather, it pivots to her side at just the right moment, pulling the rug out from under Sonny and his colleagues and also, perhaps, from under itself. In these earnest, cheer-worthy moments, “Air” almost convinces you that it’s more than just a feel-good celebration of capitalism and corporate power, that it has its eye not just on the prize but on the entire game — and that it’s looking out for all the underdogs as fervently as it wants you to believe.

'Air'

Rating: R, for language throughout Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Playing: Starts Wednesday in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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The 2023 biographical sports drama Air is a massive hit with critics, with the film already sitting high among Ben Affleck’s directorial features. Air tells the true story of the origins of Nike’s massively popular Air Jordan shoe line, focusing on the efforts of salesman Sonny Vaccaro to seal a game-changing deal with basketball rookie Michael Jordan to wear their shoes. The all-star ensemble cast of Amazon’s Air is led by Affleck, Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, and Marlon Wayans. While Michael Jordan’s actor isn’t seen in Air, the legendary basketball icon is still at the heart of the sports movie’s inspiring story.

Early reviews from critics have been incredibly positive, with Air ’s Rotten Tomatoes high among Ben Affleck’s directed movies . At the time of writing, Air holds a Fresh 98% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes , which improves upon the 96% rating held by Affleck’s Best Picture-winning film Argo . The reasons for critics’ overwhelmingly positive reviews for Air are attributed to numerous aspects of the “Dad Movie” sports drama, from the performances of the award-winning cast to the energetic direction of Ben Affleck. Given the widespread support and enthusiasm for Air , it seems that 2023 has seen its first major potential Oscars contender.

6 Air’s Cast Performances Are Incredible

Some of the highest praise for the 2023 movie Air is directed at the movie’s cast, particularly movie star Matt Damon as salesman Sonny Vaccaro, Ben Affleck as an eccentric Phil Knight, and Viola Davis as Michael Jordan’s mother, Deloris Jordan. Both Damon and Davis have been nominated for acting Oscars, with Davis taking home the award for Best Supporting Actress for Fences . As such, the acclaim for the movie’s lead actors isn’t surprising, though many critics are also celebrating that Air works better because of the ensemble nature of the cast.

Supporting actors Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, and Marlon Wayans significantly contribute to the film’s feel-good and witty nature, which underscores much of Air ’s positive reviews . It’s also possible that Matt Damon and Viola Davis could receive Oscar nods in 2024 for their work in Air , with the latter being specifically requested to star in the movie by Michael Jordan himself. Critics note that Davis, in particular, adds another layer of heart and compelling emotion that elevate the film's strength beyond Air ’s sports-centered inspiring story.

5 Air Is A Major Crowd-Pleaser

Feel-bad movies have certainly risen in recent years, but Ben Affleck’s Air is a certified crowd-pleaser that leaves audiences feeling inspired and energized after the credits roll. Many of Air ’s positive reviews celebrate the movie's fun nature and how it brilliantly underscores the legendary nature of Michael Jordan without even showing his face. According to critics, Air is a movie that leaves audiences with smiles on their faces due to the great chemistry of the cast, its unconventional approach to the sports biopic, and its liveliness that turns a topic of entrepreneurial corporate power plays into a highly entertaining ride.

4 Air’s Screenplay Is Smart & Witty

The writing is another reason why Air has received such good reviews from critics. Air ’s screenplay is written by Alex Convery, with the 2023 sports biopic shockingly being his debut. Critics are raving about how entertaining the film is due to Convery’s script, particularly its fun banter and dialogue between characters, sharp wit, and smart conception. Even though the world knows how the story ends, Convery’s screenplay adds plenty of heart and humor to the origins of the Air Jordan sneaker that work to create a riveting 112-minute tale.

Critics’ positive reviews also remark that Air ’s screenplay gives the movie a powerful momentum that is enhanced by Affleck’s direction. It’s also noted that the screenplay is written in a manner that audiences don’t have to understand legal jargon, sports marketing, or Michael Jordan’s basketball history to enjoy the movie, as it’s the people and characters that create the high stakes. The Telegraph ’s Robbie Colin wrote that Convery’s script combines the sentiments of Moneyball ’s intricate sports world assessments and Jerry Maguire ’s corporate David vs. Goliath battle. Air ’s reviews indicate that this unique approach to its story through the clever screenplay is a large portion of why the Ben Affleck movie is such a hit.

3 Ben Affleck’s Direction Gives Air An Exciting Energy

One frequently-noted reason for Air ’s critical success is Ben Affleck’s direction, particularly the energy and hope his vision brings to the 1980s-set true story. While Air has a basic inspirational story, it’s the way that Affleck turns it into a powerful crowd-pleaser that has critics raving about the 2023 movie. The 1980s production design and world-building of Affleck’s fifth directorial feature create an atmosphere that unconventionally energizes the story rather than follows typical sports drama beats. Air functions successfully as a sum of its parts, from acting performances to the overall tone, each of which can be traced back to the creative decisions made by Ben Affleck as the film’s director.

2 Air Is Reminiscent Of Moneyball’s Sports True Story Success

The baseball biopic Moneyball stands high among installments of its genre, with many of the good reviews for Air noting that the 2023 film reflects the successes of the 2011 movie. Moneyball , which holds a Certified Fresh 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, went on to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and is similarly regarded as an ultimate “Dad Movie,” though Air seems to be even better with its compelling dramatic performances, wit, and fun energy. Both are true sports stories rooted in overcoming the odds, taking risks, and changing the game, with Moneyball and Air both being well-directed, well-acted, well-written crowd pleasers.

Related: Moneyball: What Happened To Billy Beane

1 Air Is Ben Affleck’s Best Directorial Feature Since Argo

Air is Ben Affleck’s fifth directorial feature, following Gone Baby Gone , The Town , Argo , and Live by Night . Ahead of its premiere, Air also holds the best Rotten Tomatoes score of Ben Affleck’s movies , with Argo now falling to second place with a 96% critic score. While Air certainly stands as one of Affleck’s best movies, it likely isn’t the best, as Argo is more apt to hold this title. Still, Air is undoubtedly Affleck’s best movie since Argo , as it has a good chance of being an Oscar contender, proves how strong Affleck has grown both as a director and actor, and is of far better quality than his 2016 critically-panned feature Live by Night .

Air is a fitting return to form for Ben Affleck, and the movie’s positive reviews note that it’s even more exciting to see what he’ll do in the future. The critical response also indicates that Affleck gives some of his best work when he’s directing his own performances, so the anticipation is growing for the next project he chooses to lead both on and behind the camera. While the audience reception to Ben Affleck’s Air will also indicate where it ultimately stands among his directing projects, the stellar reviews from critics have it in the race for his best movie yet.

Sources: Rotten Tomatoes , The Telegraph

‘Air’ Review: Ben Affleck’s Story of Michael Jordan and Nike Is a Slam Dunk

Starring Matt Damon, Viola Davis, and Jason Bateman, 'Air' is a great example of Ben Affleck's skills as a filmmaker.

Ben Affleck deserves more credit. The actor/writer/director has gotten an unfair amount of crap over the decades, from the ebbs and flows of his acting career to becoming a favorite of the paparazzi, but the work Affleck has done over three decades is truly impressive. As an actor, he’s worked with directors like Richard Linklater , Gus Van Sant , Terrence Malick , Ridley Scott , and David Fincher . As a writer, his first produced screenplay, Good Will Hunting , won Affleck a Best Original Screenplay Oscar alongside Matt Damon , and, in addition to writing his last three directorial efforts, he teamed back up with Damon and with Nicole Holofcener on the criminally underrated The Last Duel .

And as a director, Affleck has given us the type of adult dramas that we rarely see anymore on the screen, films that stick with you long after they’re over, yet, somehow, remain crowd-pleasing—films like Gone Baby Gone , The Town , and the Best Picture Oscar-winning Argo . Sure, this is the guy who loves Dunkin' Donuts with an unshakable passion, and has had some high-profile romances, but Affleck’s work is impeccable at this point. Seven years after his only swing-and-a-miss as a director, 2016’s Live by Night , Affleck returns as director with Air , an excellent example of Affleck’s gifts as a filmmaker, a film that despite largely taking place in boardrooms and over phone calls, becomes one of the best films of 2023 so far, a compelling story that keeps us on the edge of our seats, despite us knowing exactly how this story will end.

Set in the mid-1980s, Air shows us a time when Nike was only the third-biggest shoe company in the world, trailing behind Converse and Adidas, and attempting to make their name in basketball shoes—and considering closing down the division altogether. While most of the basketball side of Nike wants to attempt to get several iffy NBA players signed to Nike, Sonny Vaccaro ( Matt Damon ), wants to sign one rookie: Michael Jordan . Sonny sees something in Jordan that no one else sees yet, and knows that using Nike’s entire basketball shoe budget to get Jordan will be, well, a slam dunk. The only problem Sonny has is trying to convince Nike to make the biggest deal they’ve ever made for a shoe, and convince Jordan—who has no interest in Nike—to come over to a company that is third best.

RELATED: The True Story Behind Ben Affleck’s Next Directorial Feature ‘Air’

Much like Affleck’s other films, Air has an incredible cast all the way down the line. In recent years, Damon has become the ideal actor at this type of role, playing characters that seem to be able to predict the future of whatever medium he’s thrown into (see also: Ford v Ferrari ), but also showing a passion and sense of humor that makes him such an engaging lead. Jason Bateman is excellent as Rob Strasser, Nike’s advertising manager who Sonny convinces to help in his wild scheme early on, and Affleck perfectly chose himself to play the head of Nike, Phil Knight . Even in smaller roles, Marlon Wayans , Chris Tucker , and especially a loud-mouth Chris Messina , each get their own moments to steal this film right out from under the lead actors. This is especially true of Viola Davis , who plays Michael’s mother, Dolores Jordan , at the request of Michael himself. In a way, Davis almost plays the audience surrogate, as she and the audience both know the power and brilliance that her son has on the court, and we know he’s worth every penny that she fights for in her son’s name.

The feature film debut of writer Alex Convery , Air ’s screenplay could easily be criticized for essentially being built around characters giving grandiose, motivational speeches about the power of greatness, or the power of taking a chance, yet Air never gets overwhelmed by these monologues. Instead, since we know where this story goes, these moments have a surprising amount of impact, as we know that we’re watching these people do everything they can to help one of the greatest athletes of all time achieve his potential. Convery and Affleck do all of this, creating a story that feels grand, despite often taking place in less-than-impressive offices and in conversations that largely center around how to make an excellent shoe—that they don’t realize will change the history of footwear forever.

Again, as with Affleck’s other films, Air feels like the type of film that we don’t really see too often anymore. Air is inspirational, and moving, and deeply funny, all while exploring people who are simply good at their jobs trying to do what’s right. It sounds simple, but it’s anything but, in order to make a story like this as exciting as it ends up being. Affleck and Convery know exactly how to handle this story and still make it looks easy. For example, Affleck makes the smart choice in not ever showing Michael Jordan’s face. Jordan is a presence that looms large over all these characters, and while he interacts with the cast and this story, Affleck knows that showcasing Jordan any more than he does would dare to take the focus away from the larger story at hand. Similarly, he knows just how to use the supporting cast, never overdoing it with the performances by Davis or Messina that could threaten to steal the story away from Damon’s Sonny. It’s a masterful balancing act that Affleck handles perfectly.

It would be hyperbolic for sure to say that Affleck is the Jordan of this type of crowd-pleasing, mature filmmaking, but he’s certainly one of the best at it. As Sonny shows us early on when trying to get Nike invested in Jordan, he knows that Jordan has an ease on the court, that he makes it all seem so easy, despite the tension and pressure that any other player would feel. Similarly, Affleck makes Air look easy, a director who knows exactly what he’s doing, and knows how to build anticipation, work our excitement, and tell a story about a shoe that is truly enthralling and gripping.

Air comes to theaters on April 5.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Sweet dog tale has some peril and mature themes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

On the basketball court, teamwork is upheld as a p

Josh is a tween who's just moved to a new town and

The cast is almost all White, except for a Black s

The main character is pushed around at school, tau

"Sucks," "hell," and "shut up." Taunts include "wa

Characters eat SpaghettiOs in multiple scenes (bra

The villain drinks a beer while talking on the pho

Parents need to know that Air Bud is the first film in a series that stars a basketball-playing golden retriever named Buddy. Though mostly lighthearted, the movie does show a child dealing with his father's death. It also depicts abuse -- both animal abuse and the physical abuse of a boy by his coach -- but…

Positive Messages

On the basketball court, teamwork is upheld as a positive virtue by the new coach, in contrast with the old coach's philosophy of winning at all costs. The responsibility and care required to take care of a dog is shown, contrasted by the mistreatment Buddy suffers at the hands of his first owner, who exploits him for economic gain and doesn't give him much love or affection.

Positive Role Models

Josh is a tween who's just moved to a new town and must learn to adapt after his father's death. Though he's depressed and lacks confidence early in the film, Josh learns responsibility and develops confidence as he takes care of Buddy and joins the school basketball team. Arthur is the new basketball coach for Josh's team; he actively encourages teamwork, unlike the previous coach, who only wanted to win at any cost.

Diverse Representations

The cast is almost all White, except for a Black supporting character, Arthur, who's Josh's coach. Arthur is positive but clich éd -- he's a former pro basketball player-turned-mentor who's two-dimensional and exists to support/teach White characters life lessons. But the film warmly portrays a single working mom who's caring and resilient.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

The main character is pushed around at school, taunted with nickname "water boy," and knocked down on the basketball court. Animal abuse is implied at the hands of Buddy's first owner, who yells at Buddy and calls him a "fleabag mongrel." A man recklessly drives a truck, crashing into signs and nearly running over two people before driving into a lake (no one gets injured). Buddy falls off the back of a truck while he's in a crate (he's unhurt). A coach uses aggressive tactics, yelling and throwing basketballs at a teen who looks scared. Sad scenes and crying as a boy abandons his dog for the dog's own good.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Sucks," "hell," and "shut up." Taunts include "water boy" (accompanied by pushing around) and "dumb hooligan," and an abusive pet owner calls Buddy a "fleabag mongrel."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Characters eat SpaghettiOs in multiple scenes (branded cans visible) and wear a Nike hoodie. Captain Crunch cereal, cans of Pepsi, and Gatorade water coolers are visible. An important character was a former New York Knicks basketball player -- a branded T-shirt and collectible card appear in the film.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The villain drinks a beer while talking on the phone near a window that's stacked with beer cans.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Air Bud is the first film in a series that stars a basketball-playing golden retriever named Buddy. Though mostly lighthearted, the movie does show a child dealing with his father's death. It also depicts abuse -- both animal abuse and the physical abuse of a boy by his coach -- but makes it clear that both are wrong, and the perpetrators are punished. One adult drinks beer. Language includes "sucks" and "hell," plus insults like "dumb hooligan" and, directed to Buddy, "fleabag mongrel." In terms of diversity, almost all characters are White except one key character of color, who's positive but falls into stereotypes as a Black basketball coach who's two-dimensional and exists only to teach life lessons to White characters. But Air Bud does have a strong example of a single mother/widow who works hard to take care of her kids. Other positive messages include the value of teamwork and the responsibility and care required to take care of a dog. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (9)
• Kids say (15)

Based on 9 parent reviews

Great movie, more serious than sequels.

What's the story.

In AIR BUD, after being abandoned by his abusive clown owner ( Michael Jeter ), playful golden retriever Buddy meets Josh ( Kevin Zegers ), a depressed 12-year-old whose father has just died and whose mother has relocated the family to a new town. That town holds all sorts of secrets for a curious kid: a basketball court hidden behind overgrown vines and the dilapidated fence of an abandoned church, a basketball legend lurking behind the calm exterior of a school janitor, and, most important, a rare and talented dog who can make baskets. Josh and Buddy form a fast friendship, and when Buddy charms the audience at one of Josh's games, he becomes the team's mascot. All is well until Buddy's mean former owner finds out about Buddy's talent and comes to claim him. Then Josh must decide whether to let Buddy go or try to save him from further abuse.

Is It Any Good?

This movie aims straight for the heart with its infectious mix of drama, silly villains, impish doggy antics, and adventure. All along, Air Bud teaches viewers about responsibility, loyalty, and love. Far from being alienated, having Buddy's love gives Josh a family again. He's happy, his mother is happy, and Josh even gains a mentor and father figure in the form of Coach Arthur Chaney ( Bill Cobbs ).

Air Bud has it all: a fluffy golden retriever, a big final game, a car chase, and villains who are mean but in a comical, over-the-top way that can appeal to a broader age range. You can see why it spawned a franchise, and your kids may want to see them all. But be aware that none of the successors are nearly as good.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the proper treatment of pets. Does Josh display responsibility in Air Bud when it comes to Buddy?

How is teamwork shown and promoted as a positive value on the basketball court?

How is this film similar to and different from other dog movies?

What are signs of abuse, and what should you do if you discover them? How would you react if you saw adults doing things wrong?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 1, 1997
• On DVD or streaming : January 6, 1998
• Cast : Kevin Zegers , Michael Jeter , Wendy Makkena
• Director : Charles Martin Smith
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Buena Vista
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Sports and Martial Arts , Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Friendship , Great Boy Role Models , High School
• Character Strengths : Teamwork
• Run time : 98 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : brief mild language.
• Last updated : May 10, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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'Air' review: It's all about the shoes, and A-list cast, in Ben Affleck's slam-dunk drama

Ben Affleck's  superbly crafted drama “Air” lands like a classic Michael Jordan dunk – you can even imagine Affleck’s tongue wagging and legs splayed in mid-jump akin to his Airness.

Like “Moneyball” before it, “Air” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) is more concerned with the business of the sport than the actual game, though the central plot line is just about as thrilling as a close finish. The film is a captivating tale boasting a deep bench of talent (most notably Matt Damon and Viola Davis) and a shoe at its center, a Cinderella tale for dads and dudes – and protective moms, too – that oozes 1980s style and finds something to say about the value of athletes still true to this day.

'Best movie of the year': Ben Affleck's Michael Jordan biopic 'Air' gets raves at SXSW

In 1984 following the NBA Draft, shoe companies are scrambling to sign rookies to endorsement deals and Nike’s situation is more dire than most. Led by high-strung, philosophy-spouting Phil Knight (Affleck), the brand is famous for its running gear but its basketball division, on the cusp of being axed, is in desperate need of star power. With only $250,000 to spend on a few players, schlubby basketball scout Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) is the one tapped to find the court stars who can take Nike to the promised land, though most of the big guys have already signed elsewhere.

Sonny sees something magical in the third pick, a skinny kid out of North Carolina drafted by the Chicago Bulls, though Jordan – according to prickly agent David Falk (Chris Messina) – is set to be an Adidas man. Willing to risk his job and remembering what his co-worker Howard White (Chris Tucker) told him about the power of a Black mother, Sonny goes rogue and travels from Nike’s Oregon headquarters to Jordan’s home in Wilmington to meet with parents Deloris (Davis) and James (Davis’ real-life husband Julius Tennon).

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While Deloris suffers no fools, she doesn’t discount Sonny’s hard sell and ponders his perspective of the situation as the clock ticks down on Nike’s chances to ink this culture-changing phenom.

Ranked: Stream the 20 best basketball movies

Most sports fans or any sneakerheads who’ve bought a pair of Air Jordans in the past four decades know how the story ends, but Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery are still able to ratchet up the right amount of tick-tock tension. The joy is in the journey, with dramatic scrambling within Nike as Knight weighs happy shareholders vs. being a shoe company maverick and Deloris maintaining her steely facade as the Jordans meet all the potential suitors. Even though we’re talking about corporate brands here, the competition between Converse, Adidas and Nike is tantamount to a Lakers vs. Celtics playoff game and Affleck really leans into it in crowd-pleasing fashion.

On screen, Affleck’s bare-footed honcho is one of several colorful supporting turns that lift “Air.” Jason Bateman co-stars as a snarky Nike marketing man with real stakes in Jordan’s potential signing, Matthew Maher is enjoyably eccentric as the shoe-designing mad scientist who hatches the legendary footwear, and Tucker brings a comedic side to the movie as White, who along with assistant Olympic coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans) are key figures in Jordan’s ultimate choice.

New movies this week: Watch Ben Affleck's 'Hypnotic,' stream Jennifer Lopez's 'The Mother'

Damon and Davis together are phenomenal: Sonny doesn’t take no for an answer when it comes to this once-in-a-lifetime player while Deloris is clear-eyed and honest about her boy’s future and how valuable he truly is. Interestingly, Affleck presents Jordan as a mostly passive participant, a character whose face you never see, instead focusing on the wheels turning around him. (Jordan's hoop skills do get featured in one sequence that both gives an important moment weight while also in a way taking away from it. Your mileage may vary depending on your MJ fandom.)

“Live by Night” aside, Affleck’s directorial record is pretty impressive and “Air” feels like his most inspired effort to date, an underdog story with the greatest basketball player of all time at its heart.

• Entertainment

‘Air’ review: Affleck entertains with assists from top-brand talent

Movie review.

At the end of “Air,” director and co-star Ben Affleck, bafflingly bewigged as Nike CEO and co-founder Phil Knight, lies back on his office couch and utters a single word: “equity.” It’s a bit of a cheeky callback to something that happens even before the movie starts: the appearance of the production logo for Affleck’s new company, Artists Equity, which produced “Air,” and which seeks to shake up business as usual in Hollywood, in the same way that Nike and the Jordan family shook up business as usual in the sneaker industry.

Artists Equity is a company designed to share profits with the craftspeople who make the movie, alongside the top-billed stars and producers. This ethos about sharing the wealth among talent also forms the crux of the main argument in “Air,” which is delivered passionately in a climactic speech by Viola Davis, playing Deloris Jordan, Michael Jordan’s mother, who knew — and demanded — her son’s worth.

“Air,” written by Alex Convery, becomes Affleck’s treatise on the film industry and the perils of celebrity, shoehorned into a biopic of a brand: It’s the story of a jogging shoe company courting the greatest player of all time with a signature sneaker, resulting in an unprecedented deal that continues to garner $400 million a year in passive income for Michael Jordan. It’s somewhat of a miracle that “Air,” a film about the iconic Air Jordan sneaker, works as well as it does, considering that most viewers already know the outcome of this movie, which revolves around a single meeting held in Beaverton, Ore., in 1984. This is a story that on paper doesn’t have a shred of suspense, but Affleck applies just the right elements to make it sing.

The first crucial component is Davis as the steely Deloris, delivering the aforementioned three-pointer of a speech, and the second is Affleck’s best friend and business partner, Matt Damon, playing Nike basketball guru Sonny Vaccaro with the kind of sincerity and determination that Damon makes look easy. As Knight, Affleck takes on the erudite weirdo role opposite Damon’s earnest schlub, much like in the last movie they made together, the underrated medieval epic “The Last Duel,” another meta text that used a period setting to comment on contemporary issues.

Affleck surrounds himself, Damon and Davis with a quartet of actors doing absolutely riotous character work and hitting every wild shot. Jason Bateman plays Nike marketing exec Rob Strasser as perpetually bothered and snarky, making a full-course meal out of every tiny reaction; Chris Messina is at full froth as Jordan’s agent David Falk, spewing soliloquies of florid filth on the phone while ensconced in a black and chrome office, sometimes casually twiddling a large knife. Chris Tucker plays affable Nike talent relations exec Howard White, who builds a cultural bridge between a Black family from North Carolina and a crew of Oregonian sneaker heads. Matthew Maher rounds out the team as designer Peter Moore, an oddball philosopher of footwear who turns the Air Jordan into an objet d’art, a reflection of the individual player designed for mass market consumption.

The style is busy, Affleck laying a heavy hand on the ’80s references and music cues, Robert Richardson’s cinematography mimicking the amateurish style of someone with a brand-new camcorder. But the pace flies, and the actors make the film wildly engaging. With Davis as the quietly powerful Deloris jockeying for her son’s best interest, and Damon’s Sonny offering inspirational speeches about immortality and the rise and fall of celebrity, it almost feels like buying Jordans is a virtuous act. But remember, that’s just the genius of marketing, and movie magic. “Air” might not be the movie that makes Ben Affleck immortal the way the Air Jordan did for Michael, but it’s an entertaining representation of his new, industry-disrupting company, an enterprise that hopefully has a lasting impact.

With Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Chris Tucker, Matthew Maher. Directed by Affleck, from a screenplay by Alex Convery. 112 minutes. Rated R for language throughout. Opens April 5 at multiple theaters.

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Air Review: A Slam Dunk Sports Film Captures Greatness

Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) convinces Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to pursue Michael Jordan in 1984.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon deliver their best film since the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting . Air tells the incredible true story of Nike's fateful decision to put their entire basketball operation on the shoulders of a talented young athlete. Michael Jordan, who's never seen, became the greatest basketball player of all time. His eponymous shoe brand dominating athletic sportswear for decades. But in 1984, he was just another promising rookie in a crowded NBA Draft.

Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) returns exasperated to Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. The basketball talent scout didn't agree with the company's direction. Nike had achieved great success in the running shoes market. They were flailing against behemoths Adidas and Converse to secure basketball stars. The sales numbers were grim. Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) was under considerable pressure to shut down the basketball business and terminate the entire department.

A Contentious Meeting

Marketing executives Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and Howard White (Chris Tucker) had a plan to spread their meager in comparison budget across multiple prospective players. Sonny scoffs at the idea during a contentious meeting. They were never going to compete with heavyweight basketball stars like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Later that night, Sonny changes everyone's fortunes after reviewing tape of the 1982 Georgetown vs. North Carolina NCAA National Championship. Michael Jordan wins the game in a classic last second buzzer beater.

Sonny races back to the office with a bold strategy. Jordan was going to transform the sport — they should put their eggs in his basket. Phil thinks he's crazy; Rob and Howard agree. They didn't have a chance. Jordan will undoubtedly sign with Adidas or Converse, so Sonny reaches out to Jordan's ruthless agent, David Falk (Chris Messina). Falk laughs at and berates him, but does reveal a critical piece of information: Michael's mother, Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), makes every decision. So Sonny does the unthinkable and flies to North Carolina, appealing to her directly, thus incurring Falk's formidable wrath and putting Nike's leadership in a cutthroat battle to sign a promising but unproven young man.

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The outcome is never in question, of course, as audiences (especially those sporting Air Jordan sneakers) may know their history. Nonetheless, screenwriter Alex Convery, sublime in his feature debut, captures the thrilling unknowns of a pivotal point in time. Sonny's unwavering belief had dire consequences. He committed to a course of action that threatened Nike and its employees, but Sonny wasn't excoriated or fired for such a brash move. Initial fury gives way to unconditional support; Nike was born from progressive thinking, after all. They had faith in Sonny and trusted his instincts. The ensemble scenes of the Nike team coming together are absolutely enthralling.

Air Is an Early Awards Contender

Affleck's brilliant as a director and co-star. Air takes you back to the vibrant '80s with fantastic nostalgia. The rocking soundtrack, settings, and period costumes engulf you in a bygone era. Affleck playfully mocks Phil Knight's Buddhist sayings and fashion sense. I laughed out loud at his springy perm and colorful jogging outfits. He and Damon anchor the film with a bedrock relationship that's evident in every collaboration. They know how to get the best from each other. Air is a slam dunk and early awards contender across the board.

Air is a production of Amazon Studios, Skydance Sports, Artists Equity, and Mandalay Pictures. It will have a theatrical release on April 5th from Amazon Studios , ahead of its streaming release on Prime Video.

Review: 'Air' is a movie classic in the making that you don't want to miss

Big news: Ben Affleck directs the first all-star Oscar contender of 2023.

Big news: Ben Affleck directs the first all-star Oscar contender of 2023. And that's something for a financially angled tale about creating a sneaker. Not just any sneaker, it's the Air Jordan, named after then-hoops rookie Michael Jordan, that sparked a culture revolution in 1984.

Now in theaters in advance of its streaming debut on Prime, "Air" stars Affleck as Nike CEO Phil Knight, a profit-obsessed Buddhist (even he laughs at the contradiction) faced with pressure from the publicly traded Nike company when Adidas and Converse leave it in the dust.

Enter a livewire Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, a sweaty schlub in charge of Nike's flailing basketball division. Sonny wants to blow his entire marketing budget on signing Jordan. In hindsight, it's a eureka moment. Back then, Sonny was laughed at by Nike honchos Howard White (Chris Tucker), Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans).

It's a kick watching Affleck and Damon, Oscar-winning besties for writing "Good Will Hunting," go at each other on screen. Though they've appeared together in nine movies, "Air" marks the first time that Affleck has directed his boyhood chum from Massachusetts. And it speaks volumes about their relationship that Damon gives one of his best ever performances.

In fact, all the actors are dynamite in roles large and small, a sign of a gifted director. Affleck won a best picture Oscar for 2012's "Argo," though the Academy snubbed him for directing. That can't happen again. As Phil and Sonny fight it out over Jordan, they build a team in which every player is essential, just like in basketball, just like in movies.

MORE: Review: 'Hustle' radiates love for the game in every frame

Getting Phil's OK is nothing compared to watching Sonny take on Jordan's agent, David Falk (Chris Messina making hostility a hoot), and then drive from Nike's Oklahoma offices to North Carolina to meet Jordan's parents unannounced and clearly unwelcome.

Deloris Jordan, Michael's mother, bristles at even the hint of compromising her son's talent and integrity for a shoe deal. Jordan himself insisted that only one actress could play his mom -- EGOT winner Viola Davis. Smart choice since the triumphant Davis is a primal force who powers the role of Deloris by nailing every nuance with maternal fire and feeling.

"Oh man, here we go," laughs James Jordan (a warm and wonderful Julius Tennon, Davis's off-screen husband) when his wife negotiates beyond a flat fee for a piece of the Air Jordan profits in perpetuity, a decision that would change celebrity product endorsements for keeps.

It's a good thing that Davis embodies the mother-son bond since we see nothing of Jordan himself in the movie, except in archival footage. And don't look for on-court fireworks. The dynamics here are focused on what made the shoe a phenom, including Peter Moore (a terrific Matthew Maher), who created the famous Air Jordan 1 silhouette.

Kudos are due to screenwriter Alex Convery, a relative kid at age 30, who was about the same age as Affleck and Damon were on "Good Will Hunting" when he started a spec script for "Air" that became his first produced screenplay. Except for a quick mention of sweatshop exploitation, the screenplay goes easy on Nike. But Convery comes up aces by packing laugh-out-loud fun and nailbiting suspense into every frame.

"Air" deserves comparison to 2011's classic "Moneyball," which dialed down on actual baseball in favor of the deal-making that fed the roar of the crowd. "Air" is a basketball movie like "The Social Network" is a Facebook movie, meaning it isn't. Both are about gamesmanship and the compromises reached in the name of winning.

So what ranks "Air" as something more than a sports-adjacent origin story about mostly white guys trying to monetize the success of a young Black athlete -- Jordan was just 21 at the time -- who became the GOAT? It's all in the teamwork, not just among the Nike crew, but among the filmmakers who chose to bring that crew's story to the screen.

Sentimental? Maybe. But tough when it needs to be. Deloris taught her son to know his own worth, and that lesson lands behind and in front of the camera in "Air." It's significant that Affleck and Damon recently started Artists Equity, a production company that operates on a profit-sharing model to create better deals for all contributors.

MORE: Review: 'M3gan' is a miracle of modern horror cinema that leaves you reeling

Affleck knows that you can't buy the kind of greatness that Jordan represents, but you can be deeply inspired by it. He knows stepping into Air Jordans, as millions have done, is more than just a business hustle. As Sonny says, the Air Jordan is going to make us all "want to fly."

And fly this movie does over the traps of deal-making and into the challenge of staying human. This is what makes the outrageously entertaining "Air" a movie classic in the making. This you don't want to miss.

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