There’s something surreal about Ben Affleck’s latest directing effort. The film – supposedly a hymn to the talent of basketball legend Michael Jordan – was written, shot and edited by white men and is dominated by white, male actors (including Affleck himself, along with his old pal Matt Damon, Jason Bateman and Chris Messina). It’s like the punchline to a joke. How many white guys does it take to make a Michael Jordan movie? Too many.
But here’s the rub. Air is the story of how and why, in 1984, NBA rookie Jordan signed a game-changing deal with sports company Nike (the deal that gave us Air Jordan trainers). And once you’ve made peace with those really narrow parameters, what you see on screen – ie virtually nothing of Jordan himself – kind of works.
