AIR feature movie review 

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• Amazon Studios

How important is it that you understand what a movie is about? I'm not necessarily talking about some avant-garde anti-narrative exercise in pure cinema, because even then you understand its purpose. Nor is this really a reference to genre films that clearly are "about" nothing more substantial than delivering a specific visceral reaction: laughter, excitement, suspense, etc. No, the matter at issue here is a movie that seems intended to convey some thematic idea, but as to the nature of that thematic idea ... well, your guess is as good as mine.

That's the vibe that seems to permeate director Ben Affleck's Air, a period-piece comedy-drama centered around the way Nike landed NBA rookie-to-be Michael Jordan in 1984, and subsequently launched a basketball-shoe phenomenon. The focus is on Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), the company's basketball scout, who becomes convinced that Jordan is the legend-in-the-making that Nike needs to provide an identity for its floundering basketball-shoe division.

There are just a couple of obstacles in the way of that goal. Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) can't wrap his head around paying Nike's entire annual basketball licensing budget to one guy before he's ever played a single pro game. And Jordan himself apparently has no interest in signing with a company lagging far behind industry leaders Converse and Adidas.

What follows has a little bit of a Moneyball dynamic in its story of a visionary man trying to win against the big boys while dealing with a tight-fisted owner and an industry that believes things must be done a certain way. Damon has loads of fun with his performance, leaning into Sonny as a doughy basketball geek with a combative streak and a gambler's irrational confidence, best exemplified in a conversation with Jordan's agent, David Falk (Chris Messina). First-time screenwriter Alex Convery can't match the rat-a-tat pacing of a Steven Zaillian/Aaron Sorkin script, but there's an energy to the sheer forward momentum of all the Nike employees—including marketing exec Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and shoe designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher)—sweating out the process of recruiting Jordan to Nike.

Beyond that stuff, however, is it clear there's a bigger point to any of it? It certainly feels for a while like Affleck's primary goal is to remind viewers that "it's 1984 now," beginning with an extended montage of the year's cultural touchstones—Beverly Hills Cop! Ronald Reagan! Rubik's Cube!—and continuing through a soundtrack that must have blown through the quivalent of Nike's annual marketing budget to get the music rights. Sure, it's one thing to needle-drop Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius," the instrumental that became the theme song for the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls. With every subsequent hit single, though, it starts to feel like Air somehow wants to be about 1984 as a concept.

That, at least, could have been something clear, albeit trivial. The problem is that Air keeps suggesting that there's something more substantial at play here than what amounts to a corporate caper comedy. During one late sequence when the fate of Nike's pitch remains in doubt, Affleck cuts to multiple co-workers of Vaccaro's whose livelihood seemingly hangs in the balance of Jordan saying yes or no, so perhaps the notion is that all of these shenanigans have potential real-life consequences—except that Air seems to spend more time worrying about Phil Knight and whether a failure will result in his ouster by the Nike board. Air and its recently-released cousin Tetris have caught flak for crafting heroic narratives around corporate business deals, and it is sometimes hard to get a handle on whether this movie has anything of substance to say about the way business should or shouldn't be done (including the somewhat off-hand reference here to the company's overseas production practices).

Maybe none of that should matter if a story delivers entertainment, and we certainly do get some of that in Air, including Affleck's amusing performance as the koan-spouting Knight. There's just a structural problem in everything that points towards bigger ideas. One of the more creative conceits in Air's execution is that Michael Jordan himself is practically invisible as a character, emphasizing the mythical quality Nike wants to build around him. It's obvious that Air isn't about Michael Jordan. Maybe it's about something else. Maybe.