Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ben Aflfeck
Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis,
Matthew Maher Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Marlon Wayans
Matt Damon is to the 2020s as Chuck Norris was to the 1980s, the
face of American insecurity. Norris made movies that appealed to a
longing to return to a time when America could win wars. Like
Rambo, his Missing in Action movies were a fantasy about
returning to Vietnam to finish the job and kicking some commie ass.
Invasion USA made Americans believe that all it would take
to stop communism was a good guy with a gun in each hand. America
doesn't worry about communism anymore. Rather, it worries about other
countries doing capitalism better than America. America doesn't make
much stuff anymore, and the stuff it does make is made in China, a
communist country better at capitalism than America. That's gotta
hurt.
Enter Matt Damon. He doesn't smear facepaint on his cheeks or strap
machine guns around his waist. No, he's an American hero for the
neoliberal age. Increasingly sporting a relatable paunch, he battles
foreigners (Europeans, because xenophobia isn't considered as
unpalatable as racism) with something those cheese-eating Euro trash
can't compete with – good old American moxie. He used it to beat the
Italians in Ford vs Ferrari (sorry, nobody refers to that
movie by its official UK/ROI release title of
Le Mans '66). He used it to beat the French in
Stillwater. Now he employs it to take on the Germans in
Air. Damon's own Missing in Action trilogy
is complete.
Air rides a wave of movies that feed on nostalgia for a
lost era when America made stuff, or at least made money off stuff made
by others. In the coming weeks and months we're getting movies about the
creators of the Blackberry phone, the American who marketed the Russian
video game Tetris to the west (take that commies!), and the genius
behind the Flamin' Hot Cheetos corn snack.
This one is about Nike's campaign to sign a rookie basketball player
named Michael Jordan in 1984. Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, the footwear
brand's basketball talent scout. He's set on signing Jordan, despite his
superiors - who include director Ben Affleck as Nike co-founder
Phil Knight - dismissing the idea as a pipedream. As hard to believe as
it seems now, Nike was an underdog at the time, trailing behind the
German behemoth Adidas and all-American rival Converse, both of whom
would seem to be able to offer Jordan far more tempting
offers.
But those Gerrys don't have American moxie dammit, something Vaccaro
has in spades. Along with shoe designer Peter Moore (Matthew Moore), Vaccaro comes up with a basketball shoe tailor made for Jordan – the
Air Jordan. As the constant inserts of Nike's 10 corporate principles
tells us, the brand likes to break the rules. Vaccaro follows this credo
by defying the NBA's rules about the amount of colour allowed on a shoe,
and thus the distinctive, some might say garish, red swoosh takes its
place on the shoe. To hell with the fines!
I can't say I was ever invested in Air's story. Do I care if a wealthy Nike employee gets a little wealthier?
Do I care if a young basketball player picks one brand over another? Not
a bit; it essentially boils down to one company paying an athlete more
money than the others. Yet I found myself engaged by
Air throughout. This is down to the pairing of Affleck and
Damon. As a director, Affleck knows how to keep a story moving, a rare
skill in today's mainstream American cinema. He has a tabloid hack's
knack of making the bland seem extravagant, and crucially he's not
afraid to be cheesy. And boy, is Air cheesy. The '80s
recreation is so in-your-face you'll leave the cinema with an aftertaste
of Soda Stream (ask your parents). The soundtrack features almost every
top 10 hit of 1984, some of them employed in the cringiest fashion
possible (has anyone ever actually listened to the lyrics of Born in the
USA?). Affleck repurposes Tangerine Dream's score for
Risky Business, because his protagonists are literally engaged in risky business.
When the Air Jordan is first revealed, the camera tracks in as Love on a
Real Train plays on the soundtrack. That a piece of music associated
with Tom Cruise banging Rebecca DeMornay is now used to fetishise a
product probably says more about the 2020s than the 1980s.
The script by Alex Convery, which previously resided on the
infamous black list of unproduced screenplays, reads a lot like second
rate Sorkin, but Damon brings it to life with a natural ease. He really
is one of our most under-rated actors. To use a sports metaphor, he's
like one of those quiet midfielders who never does anything flashy but
keeps his team ticking. He's the Paul Scholes of cinema. You may not
realise what he brings to a movie, but if you took him out of the cast
you'd notice his absence. I can't think of too many American actors that
could play a role as bland as this and keep us engaged to this degree.
The movie also gives Damon occasion to exercise his underused comic
chops, and some of his line deliveries are genuinely laugh out loud
funny.
There are some unintentional laughs here too. The real Michael Jordan
gave the film his blessing, but he doesn't seem to have allowed the
filmmakers to portray him in the movie. The way Affleck shoots around
the stand-in playing Jordan is laughably misjudged. At times we only see
him from the neck down, like Al in Police Squad (ask your
parents). Other times he keeps his back to the camera or covers his face
with his hand, like the chiropractor Ed Wood brought in when Bela Lugosi
died halfway through shooting Plan 9 from Outer Space (ask
your grandparents). The German Adidas corporate heads resemble villains
from the Austin Powers series, and the film even refers to them as Nazis
at one point.
Taken at face value, Air is a rather unpalatable
hagiography of a corporation whose contribution to the world has been a
net negative. A closing title card is keen to point out how the company
has donated $2 billion to charity, but that's a drop in the ocean for a
corporation that made $4.8 billion in 2021 from the Air Jordan brand
alone. No mention is made of the pollution caused by Nike's Asian
factories, or the modern day slavery and union-bashing that occurs
within those facilities. Air wants you to feel good about
dropping €130 on a pair of sneakers some poor bastard in Indonesia got
paid 20 cents to assemble. Its anti-European xenophobia and corporate
cheerleading rubbed me the wrong way, but I'm not one of those people
who needs a movie to pander to my political beliefs. I can appreciate it
does all these things very well, even if I wish it didn't. Affleck's
film is a fun time at the movies, but if you're won over by its free
advertising and find yourself tempted to buy a pair of Nike shoes – just
don't.
