Air – An Unimpactful True Story Drama That Lacks A Hook

Air is the newest film from director Ben Affleck, a director without a notable film since his Best Picture winning film Argo. Over that time, Affleck has been acting in several films, most notably portraying Batman in the recent crop of DC movies. That being said, it is weird to take an almost ten year break during one’s height of their career as a filmmaker. Will he capture the same magic with the Academy this time around with Air? It’s hard to say.

Air is based on the true story about Sonny Vaccaro (Damon), a man responsible for brokering the deal between Nike and Michael Jordan to develop a unique shoe brand built around the then rookie. From there, everyone more or less knows how that story goes as the Air Jordan brand was born whose shoes are some of the single most successful shoes ever made. Over the course of his career, Jordan became one of the most well renowned and successful athletes of all time and Nike putting all of their trust in him as an ambassador for their shoe brand had clearly paid off big time.

This is the major hurdle the film has to overcome, how to make the story still riveting despite the outcome of a well-known true story. This type of task was done incredibly well in a film like The Social Network, one that through intense drama, stellar dialogue and incredible filmmaking, made audiences feel like they were experiencing the story for the first time. Unfortunately, Air lacks the urgency of a film such as the former to make an impactful story on an emotional level. The film feels like a pretty safe and inoffensive watch made for an older audience and for that, it succeeds. However, one can’t help but have wanted more from it as a whole.

Ultimately, the screenplay is the most admirable part of Air. While some of the lines and line delivery felt incredibly written, they weren’t quite sharp enough to prevent it from feeling hokey. The film moves along at a good pace, however, the way each scene moves shows how tight the screenplay is at delivering a story that was simply about negotiations for getting the rights for a shoe brand. It could have been languid and thankfully it isn’t. Instead, the film is a very breezy film that is entertaining.

What Air lacks is a good sense of mise en scène. Though it is clearly a sports film centered around Nike, no one is expecting immaculate cinematography. However, other sports films have had a distinct style that allows audiences to become invested in their characters outside of their respective sports. This film features none of that. All of its characters feel like flat stand-ins for audiences to follow along with the films incessant plotting. Meanwhile, the editing is not very good either, lacking a good sense of the rules of third, making some scenes look incredibly flat. The film also struggles with cuts which don’t help with the film’s constant fade in and fade out transitions between scenes. The audio also overlaps in ways that felt incredibly unnatural and amateurish in a watch that was more akin to a made for TV production as a whole.

At the end of the day, those invested in this Michael Jordan adjacent story will be more likely to take away something from the overall narrative. However, the film just lacked enough of a hook for this reviewer to be engaged with the story, its characters though its sophomoric filmmaking at times certainly didn’t help. While some may consider Air to be a big contender come Oscar Season, that outcome seems unlikely but weirder things have happened.

still courtesy of Warner Bros.

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Brett Schutt

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