At the end of “Air,” director and co-star Ben Affleck, bafflingly bewigged as Nike CEO and co-founder Phil Knight, lies back on his office couch and utters a single word: “equity.” It’s a bit of a cheeky callback to something that happens even before the movie starts: the appearance of the production logo for Affleck’s new company, Artists Equity, which produced “Air,” and which seeks to shake up business as usual in Hollywood, in the same way that Nike and the Jordan family shook up business as usual in the sneaker industry.
Artists’ Equity is a company designed to share profits with the craftspeople who make the movie, alongside the top-billed stars and producers. This ethos about sharing the wealth among talent also forms the crux of the main argument in “Air,” which is delivered passionately in a climactic speech by Viola Davis, playing Deloris Jordan, Michael Jordan’s mother, who knew — and demanded — her son’s worth.
“Air,” written by Alex Convery, becomes Affleck’s treatise on the film industry and the perils of celebrity, shoehorned into a biopic of a brand: It’s the story of a jogging shoe company courting the greatest player of all time with a signature sneaker, resulting in an unprecedented deal that continues to garner $400 million a year in passive income for Michael Jordan. It’s somewhat of a miracle that “Air,” a film about the iconic Air Jordan sneaker, works as well as it does, considering that most viewers already know the outcome of this movie, which revolves around a single meeting held in Beaverton, Oregon, in 1984. This is a story that on paper doesn’t have a shred of suspense, but Affleck applies just the right elements to make it sing.
