So why on earth would he sign with them? What Sonny understands - it’s what Don Draper understood on “Mad Men” - is that you can’t have a great marketing concept if it isn’t supported by a dream. He’s an Adidas man, and Nike doesn’t have a lot of money to offer star athletes for endorsements. And Damon, wearing dowdy khakis and hideous stripes, with hair parted down the middle and a paunch it looks like he’s earned, takes you inside the cunning huckster gaze of Sonny Vaccaro, the sports marketing executive who gets an idea that blossoms into a vision: He’s going to sign Michael Jordan, the budding NBA superstar who was then 21 years old, to an exclusive contract with Nike. This offers some hindsight chuckles, as when Phil Knight, the co-founder and CEO of Nike (played by Affleck with prickly comic command), explains why Nike makes its revenue from running shoes, so why would it want to get into the sports-sneaker business? The movie’s needle drops, from “Money for Nothing” revving up the opening moments to “Rock the Casbah” and “Sister Christian,” produce note-perfect moments of propulsion and reflection. The film is a catchy ’80s period piece, though not because it says, “Yo, check out the ’80s details!” Rather, it’s because Affleck, who is such a casually ace director, the kind who gets everything right but doesn’t let you see the sweat, creates a 1980s texture that’s just there, at once slick and frowsy and lived-in, enveloping the characters and defining how they think.
“Air” has come along at just the right moment to remind us that terrific actors delivering savory lines of dialogue is the most special effect a movie needs. People talking! Spewing what’s on their minds, or deftly concealing it, as we hang on every word. The script is by Alex Convery, who has come out of nowhere (this is his first produced feature), and I would personally like to give a high-five to any screenwriter who creates this kind of dialogue - bright and sharp and nimble, with a cutting worldliness, the kind of conversation that’s been an engine of great films for 100 years. In that way, it has the qualities that defined both “Jerry Maguire” and “Moneyball.” “Air,” based on the true story of Nike, Michael Jordan and the man who brought them together, is full of juicy inside talk about money and sports and celebrity and what agents and marketing executives actually do. It’s the rare drama for adults these days that people actually want to see in a movie theater (I don’t mean that to sound negative the film could jump-start a trend). There are a lot of reasons why “ Air,” the sensational new movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Ben Affleck, is being consumed by audiences with eager pleasure.
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