"Air"

    ☆☆☆ 

Air is a perfectly affable bit of marketing history, which is interesting in itself, as marketing initiatives don't normally merit the big-screen treatment. Air doesn't really feel like it believes it warrants the big-screen treatment, and it's no surprise at all that the film is directed by Ben Affleck for Amazon Studios. It feels like a streaming movie, a perfectly fine way to spend a couple of hours when there's nothing better to do.

Air is a little better than that, actually, because it features a late-in-the-game stunner, a sharp, impassioned, moving monologue that cuts to the heart of everything Air believes it's about: heroism, bravery, myth-making. What Air doesn't seem to believe it's about is crass profiteering, marketing meant to drive sales.

It's about a specific moment in time, 1984 to be precise, when still-fledgling Nike decided to get into the "basketball shoe" business by courting Michael Jordan to wear and promote its shoes. A lot turned on that moment — it led to the celebrity-obsessed, insanely big-money, captialism-on-steroids world we're in today. It wouldn't take much to argue that the heroes of Air aren't really heroes at all, they're just business people who (maybe) unintentionally opened the door to some pretty awful things for the world.

But Air lacks any hint of cynicism. This isn't Moneyball or Jerry Maguire, and it's definitely not scabrous like, say, Network or Ace in the Hole. It's nice. It believes its central characters are doing good things. Even when they're kind of rotten and kind of sarcastic, they're still nice — and Matt Damon's Sonny Vaccaro, an actual Nike executive who really did the things that happen in the movie (there are even photos in the credits to prove it), really seems to believe everything he says in that speech.

It's stirring. It's wonderful. It makes Air worth seeing, I think, even if though it's warm and moving when perhaps it should be just a little bit angrier than that. Air believes the only real arbiter of success is money — it just doesn't have the strength of conviction to come right out and say it.

Viewed April 30, 2023 — AMC Burbank 6

1250