AIR QUALITY

Opening today:

Air--Sneakers are no minor matter. The comfy footwear of choice for many of us--even those of us whose idea of exercise is a good brisk walk to the refrigerator--they seem like they should be apolitical. But almost nothing in the modern, mass-produced world is apolitical. The subject of sneakers is, alas, fraught with difficult social and economic and ethical issues, ranging from the circumstances of their production, to their pricing and the crimes to which it can give rise, to the environmental impact of their disposal.

So it was probably inevitable that sooner or later a movie would be devoted to the origin story of a famous brand of sneaker. It was less clear what director Ben Affleck and the other makers of Air, a chronicle of the beginnings of Nike's Air Jordan line, would want us to take away from their account.

The focus is on Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), who scouts endorsement talent for Nike's basketball division. This being the early '80s, Adidas is king in the basketball shoe world, and Nike is a distant, unhip third to Converse, so Sonny struggles to attract big name players, especially with the anemic budget that Nike founder Phil Knight (Affleck) has allotted him.

Thus Air becomes a sort of corporate-level Horatio Alger story. Sonny's battle is on two fronts: first to convince Knight and his colleagues to let him put all of his money on the 17-year-old Michael Jordan, who hasn't even played his first NBA game, and second to convince Jordan's magisterial mother Deloris (Viola Davis) that Nike is the best place for her Adidas-loving son.

Affleck has demonstrated several times over now that he is a director of skill and panache, but also of emotional maturity. I've always suspected that if it wasn't for the elaborate fashionable contempt in which Affleck is held by many for his celebrity, his films would be hailed as the work of an important, probably Oscar-winning, American director. The fact that Nike allowed the use of their logos and products onscreen, and that Michael Jordan himself reportedly approved of the project, suggested that Air was unlikely to be deeply critical, but I went in hoping that Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery would bring some complexity and uncertainty to the subject.

Well, at one point a character observes that most of Nike's shoes are made in Asian factories; he admits that he should feel ambivalent about this, but doesn't. It may be that Convery and Affleck are using the candor in this line to speak for the movie. Air prefers to allude to the long-term benefits to young athletes to which Jordan's deal led. Similarly, while Affleck largely plays Knight for laughs as a frustrated gnomic buffoon, a would-be sage hilariously beset with anxieties, the movie is nonetheless at pains to point out Knight's massive philanthropy. Any human toll that put him in a position to be so generous is carefully steered around.

And by that point, as an audience member I had pretty much set aside my ambivalence too, because Air is irresistible, the most entertaining movie I've seen this year. Like Moneyball, it's a sports story about the triumphs of middle-aged guys working in offices--the only kind of sports success to which most of us can remotely relate. And while it isn't as good as Moneyball, it's still gripping, funny and unaccountably compelling.

As with Elizabeth Banks in the recent Cocaine Bear, Affleck leans hard into the '80s period, both in the gleefully deployed fashions and music and cultural references and in the style of the filmmaking itself. The cinematography of the great Robert Richardson captures something of the dirty-newsprint look of an '80s flick. But the real key to the film is Convery's juicy dialogue, and the lustiness with which these actors attack it.

Having revived Ford's image in Ford v Ferrari and blown the whistle on ADM in The Informant!, Damon gets to redeem yet another corporation here as the pudgy, surly, keen-minded Sonny Vaccaro; it's his best role in a long time. Chris Tucker brings an extra sweetness to his usual fast-talking routine as Sonny's glad-handing ally Howard White, Chris Messina amusingly spews his Mamet-esque invective as Jordan's agent David Falk, and Matthew Maher has a quiet eccentric charm as shoe designer Peter Moore. As Nike Marketing Director Rob Strasser, Jason Bateman hits his laugh lines well but also brings the role an unexpected melancholy.

Except in some video footage, Michael Jordan himself is a barely-glimpsed extra here; his presence is treated rather like that of Jesus in Ben-Hur. But his camp is represented by Viola Davis, whose commanding presence settles a hush over the movie's antic tone every time she speaks. She's magnificent.

Marlon Wayans also turns up as Glenn Levering, long enough to tell Sonny the story of his attendance at a particular historical event. It seems to have been included here mainly because it's such a great story, but when it renews Sonny's resolve in his campaign, the movie is in danger of reminding us that all this is about the freaking marketing of an expensive sneaker. Several times the movie notes that a shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it. But in some contexts, a shoe is just a shoe no matter who is wearing it.