Air
The story of how Nike executives (Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck) persuaded Michael Jordan to sign with them early in his career, creating the ‘Air Jordan’ trainers in the process.
Off the back of BlackBerry1 and The Founder2 I thought I might carry on a bit with the ‘corporate history’ genre of films, which seem to have had a bit of a resurgence last year.
Air is a fast walking-talking Aaron Sorkin wannabe that constantly screams THIS FILM IS SET IN THE 80s. It’s quite good but you need the real Sorkin to turn ‘making lots of money’ into something more compelling (see: The Social Network). There’s not enough zing to make you forget that the stakes for this film are “Nike might not make hundreds of millions of dollars”. It’s incredibly difficult to give a shit about whether they win or lose.
As a car nerd it was interesting to see a Porsche 911 in amongst the boxy 80s American cars, I’m used to seeing 911s now but in context back then it really did look completely alien.
This is a well made well acted film that slips by very easily, but it’s unlikely to be one people return to in a hurry.