Movie Review: Air (2023) Amazon Prime *No Spoilers*

Movie Review: Air (2023) Amazon Prime No Spoilers

I imagine the general story of how the world's greatest basketballer, Michael Jordan, was signed to Nike doesn't sound all that compelling on a surface level. From his point of view it was a few meetings and making the right choice of which shoe company to sign with.

However Air fleshes the story out by finding the key players at Nike and showing the behind the scenes drama that enabled them to take a risk on, what was then an exciting, up and coming rookie, who already had a choice of two leading shoe companies to sign with.

Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, the visionary at Nike who saw the future potential of Michael Jordan as a sure thing. He knew Michael wasn't just a great basket ball player but had to find a way to convince his CEO, Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), to make a winning pitch to the Jordan family, and particularly Jordan's mother (Viola Davis), that Nike had their son's best interests at heart.

From what I understand both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon did some additional work on the script that was written by Alex Convery, with Ben taking the director's chair as well. It's a collaboration that works and I really hope Ben and Matt do more character driven movies like this in the future.

As much as I would love to see Ben, one day, write and direct a Batman movie, I really can't get enough of these more everyday, character driven films that he and Matt are so good at.

Air is not for anyone expecting to see a lot of basketball action but, if you have an interest in the business behind the game then this is some entertaining insight that doesn't ever get too inside sport for the layperson to understand (personally I'm not even a basketball fan).

I enjoyed the film. Matt gives a convincing performance that he really believes in Jordan, and Viola Davis is definitely the right choice for Jordan's mother (which apparently Michael Jordan himself insisted on being cast in the role). I do kind of wish she had more scenes however it's not really the Jordan's side of the story that is being told here.

Overall this is an enjoyable movie that is very accessible to even non-basketball fans. It helps if you at least know who Michael Jordan is but it's not essential. The film is really about an idea and one man's unswerving belief in what that idea could be for Nike.

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