draft, and has committed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be spread among multiple players. The company is seeking endorsements from incoming rookies chosen in that year’s N.B.A. Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a basketball guru and a major promoter in the high-school and college game, is employed by Nike to provide contacts in the basketball world. (It differs, of course, from some accounts of how Jordan came to join Nike.) In 1984, Nike is mired in third place behind the two industry leaders, Converse and Adidas. Rather than magnifying these characters, the close view diminishes them, elides their accomplishments from society at large, and renders them a mere success story. Yet the film is a hermetic one, self-contained and nearly context-free, that thrusts its protagonists so far into the foreground that they block the movie’s purview. It’s a story of cultural change, of the invention of a ubiquitous style and its wider implications. The movie, directed by Ben Affleck, who also co-stars, depicts how Nike recruited Michael Jordan to the company, creating the Air Jordan line and thereby making the company very profitable and Jordan very rich. It’s a fascinating story vigorously depicted and acted, featuring characters whose heroism is unusual and whose place in history is both secure and obscure. “Air” is a meaningful movie but an unsatisfying one.
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