“Air,” Ben Affleck‘s much-buzzed-about movie that chronicles Nike‘s pursuit and eventual signing of Michael Jordan, debuted to an enthusiastic standing ovation during SXSW’s closing night on Saturday.
Affleck directs the film and stars as Nike co-founder Phil Knight, alongside Matt Damon who plays Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro. “Air” follows Vaccaro’s chase for Jordan and how it led Nike to dominance by signing the basketball star.
Peter Debruge, the chief film critic for Variety, dissected the film in his review posted to the site Saturday night.
“Air” isn’t about convincing the greatest basketball player in the history of the game to sign with Nike, although a ‘Jerry Maguire’-desperate Matt Damon — as paunchy, flop-sweating Sonny Vaccaro — might trick you into thinking this is just the (admittedly very entertaining) anatomy of a landmark business deal,” Debruge wrote. “Instead, “Air” ought to be taken as the ultimate example of the American Dream, a Cinderella story of sorts about how the third-place sneaker brand wished upon a star, and how that man — and his mother — were smart enough to know their value.”
Watch on FN
This week, Affleck revealed in an in-depth interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he went to see Jordan — and got his blessing to make the movie. The legend had one big request: Viola Davis was the only actress who could play his mother, Deloris Jordan.
Affleck recounted the encounter with the legend in great detail during the THR interview.
“[Jordan] looked at me real straight and — by the way, there’s one line for the mother character in the movie at this point — and I’m thinking, “Oh my God, he wants me to offer this to Viola Davis. How am I going to offer Viola Davis a movie with one line? That’s not going to happen.” But he was like, “That’s my mom.” He was dead serious. “Viola Davis, that’s my mom.” And that was it. Discussion was over. However it happened, it wasn’t his problem, but it was going to fucking happen. And I was like, “OK, Mike.”
Interestingly, Jordan himself isn’t depicted in the film, except from behind or in profile. (His face appears in archival footage.)
“Jordan is too big. He exists above and around the story, but if you ever concretize him, if you ever say, “Yes, that’s Michael Jordan,” we know it’s not, really,” Affleck told THR. “It’s fake. I thought if the audience brought everything they thought and remembered about him and what he meant to them to the movie and projected it onto the movie, it worked better.
On April 22, 1985, FN reported on Jordan’s $2.5 million deal with the brand and his first signature sneaker, the Air Jordan 1. The report stated Jordan and the shoe were a “silver lining in its cloud” with Nike losing money, laying off employees and suffering from poor morale at the time. Although the shoe wasn’t in stores yet, Steve Kessler, then owner of three Athlete’s Foot stores, explained to FN that Nike “created a demand before the product is available.”
In another FN interview, Vaccaro, who was present during the deal between Jordan and Nike, explained, “…the key to Michael Jordan and Nike was [executives and designers] Rob Strasser, Peter Moore and Phil Knight giving the OK to make him an icon on advertising.”
Rounding out the cast of “Air” includes Jason Bateman as Strasser, Matthew Maher as Moore, Chris Messina as David Falk, Marlon Wayans as George Raveling, Chris Tucker as Howard White, Gustaf Skarsgård as Horst Dassler, Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan and Julius Tennon as James Jordan.
The film, written by Alex Convery, is the first project from Affleck and Damon’s Artists Equity, in collaboration with Amazon Studios, Skydance Sports and Mandalay Pictures.
“Air” will open in theaters across the globe on April 5 in advance of its debut on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Check out the full review from FN sister publications Variety and Hollywood Reporter.
