Slam Dunk
Review and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to movie theaters, even as I’ll have to sacrifice seeing wonders like The Pope’s Exorcist (Julius Avery).
Air (Ben Affleck) rated R 112 min.
Here’s the trailer:
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What Happens: (No spoiler alerts in this posting because all of the substance of this movie is in the public record; in fact, if you want more details on the ongoing line of Air Jordan shoes you can consult this site [scroll down through that big gap at the top of Product history].) After Air's montage of 1980s footage accompanying the opening credits (quick clips from the Jane Fonda’s Workout video, Ghostbusters [Ivan Reitman, 1984], many more recognizables that ran by too fast for me to note or remember; the era further reinforced within the movie with constant shots of people talking on telephones attached to long, curled cords, as seen in many of the photos in this posting) we get graphics to tell us we’re in 1984 Beaverton, OR (near Portland) at the headquarters of Nike, Inc. where talent scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Demon)—who spends a lot of time watching high-school basketballers to see who might be worthy of continuing to follow as they go onto college (then, hopefully, the NBA)—learns from Nike founder/CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) Vaccaro’s basketball unit may soon disappear as their market share for basketball shoes—unlike their success with running shoes—is in a dismal third place notably behind market domination by Converse and adidas.
In trying to decide who to spend the $250,000 budget on (likely 3-5 rookies recently drafted into the NBA, with hopes their careers will be solid enough to convince customers to buy shoes being endorsed by these players), Vaccaro’s interested in Michael Jordan (who made the winning shot for the U. of North Carolina to win the 1982 NCAA Championship game, then played for the U.S. Olympic Team in L.A., summer of 1984). Other Nike decision-makers, though, think Jordan’s too expensive for their meager resources plus he’s already more inclined to sign with adidas, who makes his preferred shoe. Despite getting encouragement to follow his intuition (largely to help keep the basketball division alive) from Marketing VP Robby Strasser (Jason Bateman) and Field Representative Howard White (Chris Tucker), Vaccaro gets no support for the Jordan quest from Knight, nor from Jordan’s powerful agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), so, encouraged by what he sees of Jordan in footage of that NCAA final and a TV ad from tennis star Arthur Ashe (promoting a racket he uses but can be bought by anyone), he breaks NBA protocol, after encouragement from George Raveling (Marlon Wayans) who coached Jordan in the Olympics, by traveling unannounced to Wilmington, NC to introduce himself to Michael’s parents, Deloris (Viola Davis) and James (Julius Tennon), to make his pitch that Michael would be promoted more successfully by Nike than its rivals.
Despite angry responses to this bold move on Vaccaro’s part from Knight and Falk, the Jordon family agrees to travel to Oregon to hear Nike’s offer. In the few days they have to prepare, the Nike team gets shoe designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) to produce a snazzy, colorful mock-up (which has more of the red, a color connected to Jordan’s new team, the Chicago Bulls, than the NBA allows [according to their “51% white rule”], but Nike offers to pay the $5,000 fine every time Mike wears them on the court) while Knight finally agrees to spent the entire $250,000 budget on Jordan, the final enticement being the shoe named Air Jordan. The meeting goes well—after an impassioned, impromptu speech by Vaccaro—but later Vaccaro’s crestfallen when he learns adidas matched the money along with promising Mike’s desired Mercedes Benz 380L car; his hopes are revived, though, when Deloris calls him, proposes a final option: Michael will get a percentage of every Nike shoe sold with his name on it. Sonny tries to explain to her that’s not how this business works, so he assumes the deal’s dead; however, when he updates Phil on the situation Sonny’s shocked that Knight agrees to Deloris’ requirement, leading Michael to make a lucrative deal with Nike that provided the company with over $160 million in sales of the shoe the first year of release (they anticipated $3 million); it continues to generate about $400 million to Michael Jordan annually.
So What? Unlike docudramas that create composite or fully fictional characters to mesh in with historical personages being presented in a given narrative, as best I understand about this current movie the main cast members in Air are all based on real people (some quick details on them can be found at this site, although I’ve seen nothing that would clarify any substantial exaggerations of how they’re presented here). Further, this fact vs. fiction video (12:54 [ads interrupt at 3:00, 4:00, 8:55]) verifies most of what we view in Air with the exceptions that Vaccaro overcame his gambling habit in 1978 instead of continuing with it as we see in opening scenes of the movie where he goes for high stakes (wins some, loses some) in Las Vegas (implying he needs the Nike job—along with sudden success—to support debts as they arise); Michael Jordan met with Vaccaro individually before the pitch to him and his parents at Nike headquarters; it was Falk who convinced the Jordans to travel to Oregon for the Nike meeting more so than an impromptu appearance by Vaccaro in North Carolina. One thing that’s clear in the movie is the original Air Jordan shoe was crafted by Peter Moore, verified by some sources on the history of the shoe yet others also credit Tinker Hatfield and Bruce Kilgore as part of the foundational design team. However, Jordan himself insisted Hatfield be taken out of the movie script as the namesake of the shoe claims Hatfield had nothing to do with it at that point, so I’ll leave that dispute up to your inquisitiveness if you want to probe it further (apparently, Jordan’s only other major request of the filmmakers was Davis cast as Deloris).
I will note, though, that in the link above giving foundational Air Jordan credit also to Hatfield there’s the further claim Kilgore designed the Air Jordan II in 1986 while Hatfield was responsible for Air Jordan III-XV (1988-1999), but this is the sort of historical trivia that doesn’t factor into the story Affleck and debuting-screenwriter Alex Convery wanted to tell, even in the graphics updates at the end about Air’s principal characters—as well as adding in a quick indication of Michael Jordan’s vast realm of accolades—preceding the final credits; the filmmakers also don’t want to undercut the close connections that Vaccaro and Strasser are presented as having with Nike, even though in reality Vaccaro was fired in 1991, went to adidas where he rejoined with Strasser who went over to the same noted rival in 1987. (Minor diversionary note: official citations of adidas spell it with a lower-case initial “a” while many otherwise-informed-references use a capital “A” so I’m going with what the company seems to want, even if sharp-eyed-readers think I need better editing [which I often do].)
If you want more actual history about Michael Jordan than you get here—as this story’s about faith in his future, how that future could become a financial windfall for Nike (both of which proved to be accurate, the shoe brand having generated about $5 billion in sales by 2022)—with only a passing presence of him during the Nike pitch (he’s played by Damian Deland Young, but we see him only from the back or with images cropped to eliminate his face so the story can focus more on the conflicts/resolutions between Vaccaro and Knight, Sonny and Deloris) you might want to explore the 10-part documentary miniseries The Last Dance (Jason Hehir, 2020; streams free on Netflix, available for purchase from other platforms), which I haven’t seen but it’s proved its value in the industry by winning a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. You might also want to ponder whether the top honor given to Jordan in Air’s final pre-credits graphics as being the best basketball player of all-time is defendable given the arguments you might get on behalf of Bill Russell, LeBron James, or a few others, but it’s clear he rose extremely high over initial pro-expectations from the folks at Converse who pitched their shoe to him with the realization back in 1984 they’d never show Jordan the kind of promotion they were already giving to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird (a point Vaccaro makes in Air as part of his argument to Deloris about how her son’s image would be better celebrated at Nike). There's another aspect from Air that’s not in contention, but was a surprise to me, which is the revelation Nike’s famous slogan of “Just do it.” comes from convicted murderer Gary Gilmore’s death by firing squad in 1977 when he hastened his departure by telling the shooters “Let’s do it!” Knight picked up on that phrase, gave it a completely new context.
While Michael Jordan can easily be defended as the Greatest Of All Time (the GOAT as the term has come to be known ["goat" not being used in a pejorative sense in this context, unlike older uses of the term to note someone who causes a loss in a sporting event]) in professional basketball, though, it’s going to be a tougher challenge for Convery to win the next Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (sort of an oddity in itself given how much of what we see on screen here is adapted from fact, yet the specific dialogue interchanges which drive the success of this movie can likely legitimately be credited just to Convery’s fertile imagination), given his probable competition almost a year from now. Still, if there’s any solid consideration to be made on behalf of Convery’s talent, it comes during the Nike meeting with the Jordans when Sonny stops the flow of the planned pitch to go into a spontaneous argument directly to Michael about how fame will be inevitable, followed by the cruel reality of society then determined to bring him down requiring enormous self-control on his part, hopefully helped by caring partners at Nike (all the while during this stirring speech we see actual images from Jordan’s life, of his triumphs as well as failures [his unsuccessful attempt to switch to pro-baseball, 1993-‘95] and tragedies [his father randomly killed by would-be-thieves in 1993]). Seemingly, this was inspired (at least in the movie) by what he heard from Coach Raveling (another real-life-encourager to Michael to go with Nike) about a speech he once heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give, in which this famous orator completely deviated from his intended script, went spontaneously into what would later become his famous “I have a dream” speech. Throughout Air, though, there’s a constant flow of well-crafted-dialogue, delivered by people who seem to believe what they’re saying rather than actors accomplished in delivering lines (at times this is spoken as people are quickly walking around in the Nike offices, reminding me of the polished writing/active delivery of Aaron Sorkin’s words in NBC TV’s The West Wing [1999-2006]), with a visual style of many closeups of the various characters, giving this whole experience the sense of a documentary in the mode of The Last Dance, sort of a prequel to that miniseries on Jordan’s pro basketball career.
Bottom Line Final Comments: While COVID concerns have largely kept me out of theaters so far this year and Air seemed like its own slam dunk to stream on Amazon Prime (a major player in the production of this movie) in a month or so, I decided to use the so-far-successful-strategy of waiting a week after its debut, going to an early Saturday afternoon matinee where attendance would be minimal, wearing a mask the whole time, etc. because the CCAC reviews seemed very encouraging (Rotten Tomatoes 91% positive responses, Metacritic 73% average score) as well as this basketball-themed-movie fitting in nicely with the later afternoon last Saturday beginning of the local NBA post-season with my (San Francisco area) Golden State Warriors playing the (merely 90 miles away) Sacramento Kings who hadn’t been to the post-season since 2006 while the Warriors have won the Championship 4 times in the last 8 years (lost in the Finals in 2 of those 8 to boot), including in 2022, so it looked to be a most entertaining day. Well, it was at the theatre where I thoroughly enjoyed the movie (Damon is clearly the focus, but all involved play their parts well, especially Affleck, Messina, and Davis); however, the Warriors have yet to regain their previously-domineering-mojo, losing last Saturday by 3 points, lost again on Monday by 8, so I’ll just have to hope they can get back on track when these best-of-7-games move to San Francisco this Thursday. (Kings are aided by recently-voted [unanimously] NBA Coach of the Year Mike Brown having spent the last 6 years as the main assistant to Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr [who was also on some of those Championship Bulls teams with Jordan; Kerr still has the record for highest percentage of successful 3-point-shooting] so Brown probably already has responses planned for any evolving strategies the Warriors might attempt; to further hamper the Warriors desperatelly-needed-wins, their defensive standout Draymond Green is suspended for Thursday's game 3 in SF after having stomped on the chest of King’s player Domantas Sabonis during a fracas in Game 2, which resulted in Green’s ejection that night. Our would-be-dynasty’s just slipping away by the day.)
Air’s just now in its second week in theaters so if you’re interested in seeing it you’ll have to go out in public, but it’s in 3,507 of them domestically (U.S.-Canada) so it should be relatively easy to find (however, if your passion’s more focused on-court-action than shoes the players are wearing, you can probably find an NBA playoff-game on some TV channel just about any day of the week for the next couple of months); it’s taken in a modest $34 million domestically, $55 million worldwide, with interest possibly growing as teams work their laborious way to the Finals. While I’m anxiously waiting to see if my own local (and well-respected nationally) superstar, Stephen Curry, will have much of anything further to add to his own future-Hall of Fame-career this year, I’ll think back on the amazing exploits of Michael Jordan (wish I’d seen him more on TV, but I never paid much attention to basketball until the Warriors suddenly a few years ago made like the Kings now in turning years of frustration into surprising success) which are only hinted at in Air (as this story’s about “the shoes” as shown in a few [of endless numbers] TV ads for Air Jordans such as from 1990-'91 [be patient; lots of dead air in this clip, but also the ads] with Jordan, Little Richard, and Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon from She’s Gotta Have It [Lee, 1986] and "It's Gotta Be the Shoes" with Spike and Mike in 1991).
I’ll wrap this up with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor, this time Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” (on his 1984 album, same name as the song) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPhWR4d3FJQ which may seem like an odd choice but it’s referenced in the movie when Strasser notes to Vaccaro he finally listened closely to the lyrics (rather than just the chorus which many sing along with—possibly half-drunk—but then lose connection to the rest of the words) to realize it’s not a patriotic paean, despite its pounding beat, but instead is a sad recounting of a Vietnam War vet whose stateside story wasn’t ever great, then when he returns from combat his society has no place for him (“Born in a dead man’s town / The first kick I took was when I hit the ground/ You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much / Till you spend half your life just covering up […] I’m ten years burning down the road / Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go”). The song’s used again toward the movie’s end, noting Michael finally got the car he wanted as part of his Nike deal, but it’s more in context with what becomes the real theme of this story which kicks in toward the very end when Deloris makes her surprise demand about Michael getting a cut of Air Jordans' sales.
Some would dismiss all this as greed from an already-well-paid-athlete as well as a lucrative gamble on the part of Nike (where Knight expected maybe $3 million in sales the first year, then everyone was overwhelmed when the total exceeded $160 million), but the point is made forcefully by Deloris: Yes, Michael’s already getting a lot of cash ($250,000) just for signing on (plus his Bulls’ salary), but whatever profit Nike makes with these shoes is because he’s wearing them so it’s only right he should get some of that cash too. (A radical idea in 1984, but one that’s become much more of an industry standard today including college athletes now able to cash in on their names, images, and likenesses [not from their schools—who can still offer scholarships—but from outside sponsors], resulting from a 2021 Supreme Court decision that was supported by Vaccaro.) Springsteen’s song makes clear (even for fans who don’t really get what it’s truly about) that even those who think they are privileged because they’re “Born in the U.S.A.” often don’t realize what’s truly the way the deck is stacked against them as decisions are made to benefit the top earners/corporate investors (“Hiring man says ‘Son, if it was up to me’ / Went down to see my V.A. man / He said, ‘Son, don’t you understand?”) so even though you may have a lot of prestige in the public eye, as famed athletes do, you still should be allowed to share in how others make money off of you, especially as you batter your body for years trying to succeed in professional sports where often only the lucky few of the actually-talented find acclaim, as shown in the new documentary about my Warriors hero, Stephen Curry: Underrated (Peter Nicks), to be released in theaters as well as Apple TV+ on July 21, 2023.
SHORT TAKES
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