Air review: Air Jordan origin story isn't quite a slam dunk

Matt Damon is the quiet icon. We get why Kevin Costner became a contemporary John Wayne 40 years ago, or how Tom Cruise willed himself into becoming our era’s Clark Gable. But Damon is less eager for our love than Costner or Cruise. From Will Hunting to Mark Whitacre to Jason Bourne, Damon’s gallery of quirks and eccentrics presents him as a laureate of male worry. He’s Gary Cooper—master of subtlety—and he steers himself toward an empty space in the heart of American masculinity rarely visited in our cinema of victors, a fraught terrain where losing at life remains a real possibility.

Flop sweat issues from every pore of Sonny Vaccaro, the real-life Nike executive Damon portrays in Ben Affleck’s latest directorial effort, Air. It’s the mid-1980s, and Sonny is tasked by would-be New Age robber baron Phil Knight (Affleck) with vitalizing Nike’s athletic sneaker division by landing a celebrity endorsement from the world of basketball. Nike can’t afford to pay for an established star, so Vaccaro has to predict the future. He settles on a rookie named Michael Jordan, but has to out-compete more successful companies like Adidas for Jordan’s endorsement. The rest is mass-market history.

Affleck and his screenwriter Alex Convery think the well-known outcome of Air needs to be bolstered by the mechanics of a suspense narrative, crossed with a Rocky plot trajectory. And for a few scenes, Air feels like a gently satirical movie about corporate skullduggery. But it’s really a sports picture, where outcomes are determined by dedication, and a purity of purpose no one else can match. Damon’s Sonny is the scrappy and unlikely contender, whose love of the game gives him heart.

Chris Tucker is on hand as Howard White, a real Nike executive whose job appears to have been to tell Sonny Vaccaro how much he believes in him, again and again. If Tucker has 10 minutes of screen time, that is two minutes more than register for the viewer. It’s tempting to say Viola Davis is “wasted” in the small but pivotal role of Jordan’s mother Deloris, but Air proves it’s impossible to waste Viola Davis, because her fierce gift always eats the screen. For a masterclass in turning throwaway schtick into truth, watch Davis suppress a laugh when a meeting with the Teutonic directors of Adidas plays out as Vaccaro told her it would. We need to see Deloris’ bemusement, even if the Adidas suits can’t. Davis manifests the moment effortlessly.