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“Air” bristles with the infectious energy of the man at its center: Sonny Vaccaro, who’s hustling to make the deal of a lifetime.

Of course, we know from the start that the former Nike executive succeeded: Michael Jordan became a superstar and arguably the greatest basketball player in the history of the game. And the Air Jordan, the shoe that gives the film its title, became the best-known and most-coveted sneaker of all time.

So how do you tell a story to which we already know the outcome? That’s where the deceptive brilliance of Ben Affleck ’s directing lies. His fifth feature is much in the same vein as the previous movies he’s helmed: “ Gone Baby Gone ,” “ The Town ,” “ Argo ” (which earned him a best-picture Oscar) and “Live By Night.” He makes the kind of solid, mid-budget movies for grown-ups that are far too rare these days. Affleck emphasizes strong writing, veteran performers and venerable behind-the-scenes craftspeople. His choice in cinematographer, longtime Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino collaborator Robert Richardson , is a prime example.

With “Air,” it all comes together in an enormously entertaining package—one that’s old-fashioned but also alive and crowd-pleasing. Working from a sharp and snappy script by Alex Convery , Affleck tells the story of how Nike nabbed Jordan by creating a shoe that wasn’t just for him but of him—the representation of his soon-to-be iconic persona in a form that made us feel as if we, too, could reach such heights. This probably makes “Air” sound like a two-hour sneaker commercial. It is not. If you love movies about process, about people who are good at their jobs, then you’ll find yourself enthralled by the film’s many moments inside offices, conference rooms, and production labs.

The interactions within those mundane spaces make “Air” such a joy, starting with the reteaming of Affleck and Matt Damon . It’s a blast watching these longtime best friends, co-stars, and co-writers playing off each other again, provoking and cajoling, more than a quarter century after “ Good Will Hunting .” Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike recruiting expert who recognized the young North Carolina guard as a once-in-a-generation talent and pursued him relentlessly to keep him from Converse and Adidas cooler brands. Affleck is Nike co-founder and former CEO Phil Knight, an intriguing mix of Zen calm and corporate arrogance. He walks around the office barefoot, yet he drives a Porsche he insists is not purple but rather grape in hue. Vaccaro, as his friend and colleague from the company’s earliest days, is the only one who can speak truth to power, and the affection and friction of that camaraderie shine through.

The year is 1984 (boy, is it ever—more on that in a minute), and Nike’s basketball division is an afterthought within the Oregon-based running shoe company. Nike is also an also-ran among its competitors. Vaccaro, a doughy, middle-aged bulldog in various puddy-colored Members Only jackets (the on-point work of costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones ), knows Jordan can change all that, and most “Air” consists of him convincing everyone around him of that notion. That includes director of marketing Rob Strasser ( Jason Bateman , whose mastery of dry, rat-a-tat banter is the perfect fit for this material); player-turned-executive Howard White (an amusingly fast-talking Chris Tucker ); Jordan’s swaggering agent, David Falk ( Chris Messina , who nearly steals the whole movie with one hilariously profane telephone tirade); and finally, Jordan’s proud and protective mother, Deloris ( Viola Davis , whose arrival provides the film with a new level of weight and wisdom). Character actor Matthew Maher , who always brings an intriguing presence to whatever film he’s in, stands out as Nike’s idiosyncratic shoe design guru, Peter Moore.

“Air” is a timeless underdog story of grit, dreams, and moxie. In that spirit, Vaccaro delivers a killer monologue at a crucial moment in hopes of sealing the deal with Jordan (whom Affleck shrewdly never shows us full-on—he remains an elusive idea, as he should be, but an intoxicating bit of crosscutting reveals the legacy he’ll leave over time). Still, Affleck very much hammers home the fact that we are in the mid-1980s. Sometimes, the evocation of this period comes in subtle and amusing ways, as in a throwaway joke about Kurt Rambis that made me chuckle. (You don’t have to know anything about basketball in general or this era in particular to enjoy the film, but there are many extra pleasures if you do.) More often, though, Affleck aims to create nostalgia with nearly wall-to-wall needle drops and overbearing pop culture references. As if the lengthy opening montage consisting of Cabbage Patch Kids, Hulk Hogan , the “Where’s the Beef?” ad, President Reagan, Princess Diana, and more weren’t enough, he randomly throws in a Rubik’s Cube or a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards as a transitional device. And the soundtrack of ‘80s hits is such a constant it becomes distracting, from the Violent Femmes and Dire Straits to Cyndi Lauper and Chaka Khan to a truly baffling use of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” as Knight is simply pulling into the Nike parking lot.

Still, this is a minor quibble about a movie that, for the most part, is as smooth and reliable as one of Jordan’s buzzer-beating, fadeaway jumpers.

Now playing on Prime today, May 12th.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Rated R for language throughout.

112 minutes

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro

Ben Affleck as Phil Knight

Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser

Marlon Wayans as George Raveling

Chris Messina as David Falk

Chris Tucker as Howard White

Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan

Julius Tennon as James Jordan

Damian Young as Michael Jordan

Matthew Maher as Peter Moore

Gustaf Skarsgård as Horst Dassler

Barbara Sukowa as Kathy Dassler

Jay Mohr as John Fisher

• Ben Affleck
• Alex Convery

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• Robert Richardson
• William Goldenberg

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‘air’ review: ben affleck’s ode to michael jordan is affectionate and involving, even when it fails to convince.

The 'Argo' actor/director stars alongside Matt Damon and Viola Davis in this feature about the creation of Nike's Air Jordan shoe.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Ben Affleck ’s Air operates in a respectful and deeply reverential register when it comes to its subject, his family and the sport in which he made his legacy. The film, which premiered at SXSW , chronicles the tense Nike campaign to sign Michael Jordan, then an NBA rookie, to his first sneaker deal in 1984. That contract, closed a year before the first Air Jordans were sold to the public, changed Nike’s reputation and altered the way players negotiated brand deals.

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For most audiences, Air will be worth seeing just for the starry cast — particularly the reunion between Damon and Affleck. Their scenes possess a kinetic and intimate dynamism that the rest of the film approaches but doesn’t always match. The old friends are magnetic as Sonny — who’s in charge of the company’s flailing basketball division — and Phil try to take Nike to the next level. (Before signing Jordan, the shoe company held a meager 17 percent of the market compared to competitors Adidas and Converse.) Their conversations take place in Phil’s appropriately retro office (the production design is by François Audouy) and offer insights into how both executives tried to balance the imagination of Nike’s scrappy roots alongside its corporate ambitions.

Phil and Sonny’s divergent ideologies come to a head when Sonny proposes putting all of the fledgling division’s money on Michael Jordan. The boss disagrees, and he’s not the only skeptic. His colleagues Howard White (Chris Tucker), Rob Strasser ( Jason Bateman ) and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), one of Jordan’s coaches at the 1984 Olympics, all try to dissuade him. The dynamics within this group of coworkers and friends offer most of the film’s comedic relief while also helping us deepen our understanding of Nike’s philosophy. When they are later joined by Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), Nike’s creative director, the film applies — wonderfully — the poetic reverence usually reserved for portraying the sport in these types of dramas to the process of designing a shoe.

Sonny isn’t one to take no for an answer or ignore his instincts. After a crucial call with Jordan’s agent, David Falk (a hilarious Chris Messina ), Sonny flies from Oregon to North Carolina to court Jordan’s parents. Deloris (Davis) and James (Julius Tennon) turn out to be a tougher crowd than Sonny anticipated. They are immune to his salesman charm and unfazed by his dramatic entrance onto their property. Deloris, especially, demands a quiet respect, which Sonny, in awe, gives her.

And those experiences matter. Sonny and Deloris are bound by a profound and unwavering belief in Jordan, but, as she suggests during one conversation, his strong sense of self is a product of the lessons she has taught him. It’s Deloris’ and her son’s understanding of their worth that leads them to negotiate a contract giving Jordan a percentage of the revenue from Air Jordan sales.

Beneath the sentimentalism of Air are hints of an even more compelling thread: How do you compensate people in a society organized around corporate greed? The film’s third act highlights and circles the notion of equity. Jordan’s contract changed the way players made money from brand deals. A note right before the closing credits informs us that Sonny would play a critical role in taking on the N.C.A.A. and helping college athletes get paid for commercial use of their likeness. All of this feels prescient considering Affleck’s recent venture: Last year, he and Damon started Artists Equity , a production company that operates on a profit-sharing model in hopes of creating better deals for everyone employed to make movies. It makes Air feel like a letter of admiration — to Jordan, his family, the tenacious execs at Nike — and a statement of Affleck’s future intentions.

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'air'.

Bob Mondello

Ben Affleck directs the story of how a small athletic shoe maker cracked the big time in 1984 by introducing a shoe for an untested rookie named Michael Jordan.

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‘Air’ Review: Ben Affleck Turns Nike’s Quest to Sign Michael Jordan Into This Generation’s ‘Jerry Maguire’

Reteaming with longtime friend Matt Damon, Affleck never shows the NBA star's face, focusing instead on how Jordan’s mom (Viola Davis) negotiated his game-changing endorsement deal. 

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Americans spend tens of billions of dollars on basketball sneakers every year. Sure, everybody needs shoes, but it shouldn’t matter if your choice bears the Nike swoosh, Adidas’ three stripes or the Converse star. So why does it? In most cases, consumers aren’t simply buying footwear; they’re investing in the fantasy of walking in someone else’s shoes, be it a sports star or a personal idol, and the promise that switching one’s kicks has a direct impact on your potential for greatness.

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In a sly move, Affleck casts himself as Knight, playing the OG “shoe dog” as a comic figure with an ill-fitting wig and an aloof sense of timing. Most corporate CEOs step on other people’s sentences, butting in before their underlings have finished speaking, but not this guy. He waits a beat before responding, as if his attention might be divided between the conversation at hand and a dozen other thoughts. On the wall of Phil’s office hangs a giant sign listing the 10 rules by which Nike operates. Rule No. 2 reads, “Break the rules.” But in 1984, Nike was a publicly traded company, and boards expect rules to be observed.

Enter Sonny, Nike’s in-house basketball guru, whom “Air” introduces as a betting man: He stops by Vegas after a scouting trip, and loses it all on craps. But it’s more than a hunch that tells him Nike should invest its entire quarter-million-dollar basketball marketing budget on one player, as opposed to spreading it among several lower-ranked draft picks. Never mind that Jordan is an Adidas guy; forget that the German company (at which “Air” takes a few sharp digs) can outspend anything Nike offers.

Jordan’s genius on the court practically goes without saying, and yet screenwriter Alex Convery shrewdly decodes the 21-year-old’s potential, spelled out after Sonny studies tape of Jordan’s first year on the University of North Carolina’s team. This and other key moments play like classic Aaron Sorkin scenes, blending the inside-baseball insights of “Moneyball” with “The Social Network”-style power games. His characters aren’t quite as compelling as Sorkin’s, but they express themselves beautifully. Between nostalgia-baiting ’80s radio hits, they walk and talk strategy (around production designer François Audouy’s great sets) or else cut one another down in private (as old friends Damon and Affleck do at several points).

In the film’s most galvanizing monologue, Sonny finally gives Jordan (whose face appears only in archival footage) and his parents (Davis and Julius Tennon) the pitch. Who knows what Sonny really said in that room, but this speech — intercut with the triumphs and pitfalls of Jordan’s career — summarizes everything Michael Jordan means to us, his fans and the legions of Americans he inspired. To get to this moment, Sonny must first convince Phil to endorse his plan; he has to deal with Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, hilariously hostile); and he has to drive out and face Deloris in person.

Casting Davis was the smartest thing Affleck could have done, as the EGOT winner is to acting what Jordan is to sports: Her strength inspires, and she can move us to tears while making it look easy. We all know what happened with the Air Jordan deal — more than Adidas’ early-’70s Stan Smith alliance, the shoe launched our now-ubiquitous sneaker culture — and yet, Deloris forces Sonny to work for the family’s approval.

Memorable parts by Chris Tucker as Howard White, who traded his basketball uniform for a corporate suit, and Marlon Wayans as 1984 Olympics coach George Raveling notwithstanding, “Air” often seems to be focused on the whitest guys in the room. But Affleck is hardly blind to the racial dynamics underlying the whole saga, revealing how Deloris ensured that corporate America couldn’t exploit her son.

Then as now, Nike’s shoes weren’t necessarily any more stylish or advanced than its competitors’ — although the original Air Jordans are a thing of beauty. The company’s sneakers owed nearly all of their mystique to the athletes who wore them. In 1984, Michael Jordan was still a rookie, destined to become a legend. The novelty of “Air” comes in trying to imagine Nike as the underdog, given what the brand has become, but that’s as fine a place as any for a sports movie to begin.

Reviewed at SXSW (Closing Night), March 18, 2023. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 112 MIN.

• Production: An Amazon Studios release of an Amazon Studios, Skydance Sports presentation of an Artists Equity, Mandalay Pictures production. Producers: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, David Ellison, Jesse Sisgold, Jon Weinbach, Madison Ainley, Jeff Robinov, Peter Guber, Jason Michael Berman. Executive producers: Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Kevin Halloran, Michael Joe, Drew Vinton, John Graham, Peter E. Strauss, Jordan Moldo.
• Crew: Director: Ben Affleck. Screenplay: Alex Convery. Camera: Robert Richardson. Editor: William Goldenberg. Music supervisor: Andrea von Foerster.
• With: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Marlon Wayans, Viola Davis, Matthew Maher, Julius Tennon.

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Air Reviews

It does very well on repeat viewing. The acting, writing, and pacing of the story was great.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 31, 2024

This was incredibly entertaining. Between the soundtrack, pacing, performances, and script, this was a damn near perfect film.

This film, directed by Ben Affleck (“Argo”) and writer Alex Convery successfully builds tension in a story where everybody in the audience already knows the outcome. The story also works as 'how to' historical movie about sports endorsement deals.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 11, 2024

An immensely entertaining drama based on true events that changed the game and the business of basketball.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 24, 2023

a powerful and dramatic film that at times feels like it was written for the stage. Air has one of the best screenplays I have seen in a long time and is only lifted further by electric performances by Davis, Damon and co.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 23, 2023

Easily one of the year’s most rewatchable films.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 13, 2023

More often than not, AIR succeeds in its mission of being a crowd-pleaser, with something genuine to say.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Oct 30, 2023

AIR is a POWERFULLY moving story about hoops & dreams. With an ALL-STAR cast and SLAM DUNK script, it is this year’s first Best Picture contender.

Full Review | Sep 20, 2023

Armed with a phenomenal cast, Ben Affleck deftly directs this tale of Nike’s basketball division trying to sign a young Michael Jordan, in what would be a game-changing move for the worlds of sport, shoes and athletic marketing.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

This isn't a story about MJ's achievements so much as it is a tale of a plucky billion dollar company extending a minuscule percentage of its largesse to the player that would become arguably the greatest of all time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 8, 2023

Air is just a good movie. Affleck’s directorial skills cannot be denied, but the movie likely left a lot on the table.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 7, 2023

The goal of “Air” is to provide audiences an enjoyable two hours watching Damon, Affleck, and co. crack wise on screen while telling a feel-good story. By that metric, “Air” is a slam dunk.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 9, 2023

A film about business negotiations should not be fascinating enough to fill a documentary short but in the case of Air it soars to the top of the best films released so far in 2023.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 9, 2023

In a world full of agents, marketing techniques, reputations, and money to be made, "Air" understands all the many players it took to make Nike an iconic brand associated with sports.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Disguised as an origin story of Nike and Michael Jordan’s partnership, Air is a reintroduction of director Ben Affleck that at its heart is a story about having purpose and believing in yourself.

Affleck Soars back to the director's chair with AIR! A must see inspirational sports drama about the business of the industry that changed forever after the AIR JORDAN deal. A love letter to Jordan but specifically the focus on Jordan’s Mom was GREAT.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Air isn’t interested in cold hard facts but in how stories like the Air Jordan deal, though grounded in capitalism, can tap into the very soul of a nation. On that point, it hits nothing but net.

Air might play like a by-the-numbers underdog tale, but it has an irresistible feel-good energy led by its cast, all of whom are fine. Like other films, this isn’t really about Basketball and more the business of it,

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2023

These movies don’t really want to explain that magical transformation as much as participate in the magic themselves.

Full Review | Jun 22, 2023

moves along at a brisk pace and hits the right notes, giving us the sports-marketing movie we never knew we wanted

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 19, 2023

Review: Ben Affleck’s entertaining Michael Jordan-Nike drama is more than hot ‘Air’

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One of the pleasures of the movies is the way they can complicate and undermine the idea of history as destiny, taking unbeatable sure things and reminding us that they were once untested, unknown quantities. It’s not, admittedly, the easiest thing for a filmmaker to pull off. Too often the clarity of hindsight can become the enemy of real drama; the more phenomenal the legend, the more inevitable and even circumscribed their success can seem. There’s a moment near the end of “Air,” Ben Affleck’s shrewd, hugely enjoyable and fitfully ruminative new movie, that deftly gets at this point, when a basketball fan opines that “everybody knew” from the beginning that Michael Jordan would be an all-timer — never mind that, sometime earlier, said fan could be heard declaring precisely the opposite.

Not that “Air” treats Jordan as some kind of underdog, or even as its central subject. An NBA rookie when the movie opens, he’s already marked for greatness — a greatness of such untouchable, godlike proportions that, beyond some TV footage of the real Jordan on the court, the movie dares not even show his face. (Damian Delano Young, the actor who plays him, appears only briefly and is almost always filmed from behind.) No, the truer underdog here — and the other legend in the making — is Nike, the upstart Oregon-based footwear company with the swoosh logo, the “just do it” slogan and an initially lackluster profile in the basketball sneaker market. That last part will change forever, of course, once Nike manages, through a campaign of extraordinary savvy and daring, to outbid and outmaneuver its deeper-pocketed rivals, Adidas and Converse, and hitch its own fortunes to Jordan’s meteoric rise.

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Boasting a punchy, phone-slamming, expletive-hurling, heavily Aaron Sorkin-indebted script by Alex Convery, “Air” is an ode to the art of the landmark celebrity-endorsement deal . It’s also something of a feature-length Nike commercial, albeit a deft and entertaining one. Mostly, it’s a tribute to classically American values like branding and publicity, ambition and swagger, wealth and more wealth (the Air Jordan line has earned billions and counting) and good, old-fashioned competitive cunning. Like “Argo” (2012), Affleck’s Oscar-winning hit about how Hollywood helped rescue six Americans amid the turmoil of the Iran hostage crisis, the movie dusts off decades-old headlines and invests them with the breezy urgency of a comic heist thriller, one with far lower human stakes but an incalculably higher payout. The year may be 1984, but any hint of Orwellian gloom here is dissolved in a wave of merry capitalist brinkmanship.

The mastermind is Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, paunchy and polo-shirted), the sharpest, most stubborn mind in Nike’s flailing basketball division. Possessed of a keen understanding of the game and its players, he also has a gambler’s streak that loses him more than it earns. (His talent-scouting trips tend to detour through Las Vegas, where the script establishes his risky impulses and drops a sly beaut of a Kurt Rambis joke.) It’s Sonny who grasps and articulates the singularity of Jordan’s brilliance a few crucial beats before everyone else does. And it’s Sonny who argues that Nike, rather than dividing its annual $250,000 basketball budget among three or four lower-ranked players, should offer the whole pot to Jordan and tailor an entire shoe line to the athlete, rather than the other way around. (Matthew Maher, so good in last year’s “Funny Pages,” steals a few scenes as Nike shoe wizard Peter Moore, who designs the Air Jordan in all its prototypical Chicago Bulls red-and-black glory.)

It’s a potentially game-changing proposition — and a potentially business-killing gamble. Sonny has a lot of skeptics to convince, including Jordan, a die-hard Adidas fan, and (more importantly) Jordan’s mother, Deloris, the solid rock and gently guiding hand behind his every career move. Deloris is played, superbly, by Viola Davis, whose soft-toned, gravel-edged voice is authority itself. (In a nice touch, Davis’ husband, Julius Tennon , plays Michael’s father, James Jordan.) Two of the movie’s most beautifully written and played scenes find Sonny approaching and later negotiating with a thoughtful, quietly unyielding Deloris, setting the pattern for a story in which nearly every turning point is structured as a two-way conversation — a one-on-one master class in the art of persuasion.

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Sonny’s many sparring partners include Jordan’s potty-mouthed agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, a scream), and Nike’s good-natured but beaten-down marketing director, Rob Strasser (an effective Jason Bateman). Strasser gets a poignant if overly calculated heart-tugger of a speech that kicks “Air’s” already solid dad-movie cred up several notches; he also gets one of the script’s few moments — an oblique reference to Nike’s use of Asian sweatshop labor — that puncture the feel-good corporate vibes.

Most of those vibes emanate from the company’s affable, Zen-minded CEO, Phil Knight, a wearer of track suits and spouter of Buddhist koans played by Affleck himself as the risk-averse yin to Sonny’s reckless yang. Unsurprisingly, the well-worn Matt-and-Ben screen rapport gives Sonny and Phil an instantly readable, affectionately combative dynamic, as well as an understated emotional core.

It’s not the only time Affleck uses casting to suggestive, even subversive ends. On the surface, “Air” may look like an unrepentant valentine to the ’80s, from the amusing overkill of its extended opening montage (President Reagan and Princess Diana , Ghostbusters and Cabbage Patch Kids) to its steady stream of Violent Femmes/Cyndi Lauper/Bruce Springsteen needle drops to the simultaneously spot-on and comically exaggerated ugliness of its offices, all dim greenish lighting and chunky computer hardware. (The grubbily ancient production design is by François Audouy, the cubicle-panning cinematography by Robert Richardson.) But in some ways, the movie is also carrying on a subliminal, more subtly nostalgic conversation with the ’90s , the decade that transformed Affleck and Damon into household names and saw some of their key supporting players here first rise to prominence.

The latter include Marlon Wayans, delivering a charming cameo as George Raveling, the Olympic basketball coach who would prove instrumental in persuading Jordan to sign with Nike; and Chris Tucker , funneling his motormouthed comic gusto into the smart suit and warm, welcoming vibes of Howard White, the future vice president of the entire Jordan brand. In ways that sometimes register more potently than the action or dialogue, “Air” is haunted by the specters of these actors’ career highs and lows; this is Tucker’s first movie in seven years. It’s also haunted by the sight of Affleck and Damon, two aging Hollywood golden boys who at times seem to be confronting their own mortality alongside their characters. They’ve made a movie about the ravages of time, the fleeting, sometimes arbitrary nature of fame and the general rule of failure to which success proves an all-too-rare exception.

This meta-melancholy subtext rises to the surface late in the movie, when Sonny delivers a deal-clinching, throat-tightening boardroom speech about how few legacies endure and how few legends are remembered. It’s a message that consoles and stings, not least for the way it seems to knock even movie royalty down a few pegs. Success and fame on the level of a Michael Jordan, Sonny reminds us, has a way of throwing even great accomplishments into perspective.

“Air” comes by these ideas honestly and thoughtfully, and they’re rich enough that you sometimes wish Affleck and Convery had given them freer, unrulier reign, rather than shoehorning them (so to speak) into all the story’s busily, efficiently moving parts, its blue Slurpee sight gags and Adidas-skewering Hitler jokes. Crucially, it’s in the scenes with Wayans, Tucker and Davis that the movie engages meaningfully, if too briefly, with the role of race in the overlapping arenas of sports, celebrity and social progress, and especially the question of what Black athletes are owed by an industry that uses their names, likenesses and talent to invest a product with meaning.

Unsurprisingly, it’s Deloris who brings these issues to the fore — and also cuts through them with clean, unerring logic — when she argues for a fundamental shift in the balance of power between her son and Nike, and by extension between all athletes and the companies seeking to trade on their fame. The movie is on her side — or rather, it pivots to her side at just the right moment, pulling the rug out from under Sonny and his colleagues and also, perhaps, from under itself. In these earnest, cheer-worthy moments, “Air” almost convinces you that it’s more than just a feel-good celebration of capitalism and corporate power, that it has its eye not just on the prize but on the entire game — and that it’s looking out for all the underdogs as fervently as it wants you to believe.

'Air'

Rating: R, for language throughout Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Playing: Starts Wednesday in general release

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'Air' review: It's all about the shoes, and A-list cast, in Ben Affleck's slam-dunk drama

Ben Affleck's  superbly crafted drama “Air” lands like a classic Michael Jordan dunk – you can even imagine Affleck’s tongue wagging and legs splayed in mid-jump akin to his Airness.

Like “Moneyball” before it, “Air” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) is more concerned with the business of the sport than the actual game, though the central plot line is just about as thrilling as a close finish. The film is a captivating tale boasting a deep bench of talent (most notably Matt Damon and Viola Davis) and a shoe at its center, a Cinderella tale for dads and dudes – and protective moms, too – that oozes 1980s style and finds something to say about the value of athletes still true to this day.

'Best movie of the year': Ben Affleck's Michael Jordan biopic 'Air' gets raves at SXSW

In 1984 following the NBA Draft, shoe companies are scrambling to sign rookies to endorsement deals and Nike’s situation is more dire than most. Led by high-strung, philosophy-spouting Phil Knight (Affleck), the brand is famous for its running gear but its basketball division, on the cusp of being axed, is in desperate need of star power. With only $250,000 to spend on a few players, schlubby basketball scout Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) is the one tapped to find the court stars who can take Nike to the promised land, though most of the big guys have already signed elsewhere.

Sonny sees something magical in the third pick, a skinny kid out of North Carolina drafted by the Chicago Bulls, though Jordan – according to prickly agent David Falk (Chris Messina) – is set to be an Adidas man. Willing to risk his job and remembering what his co-worker Howard White (Chris Tucker) told him about the power of a Black mother, Sonny goes rogue and travels from Nike’s Oregon headquarters to Jordan’s home in Wilmington to meet with parents Deloris (Davis) and James (Davis’ real-life husband Julius Tennon).

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While Deloris suffers no fools, she doesn’t discount Sonny’s hard sell and ponders his perspective of the situation as the clock ticks down on Nike’s chances to ink this culture-changing phenom.

Ranked: Stream the 20 best basketball movies

Most sports fans or any sneakerheads who’ve bought a pair of Air Jordans in the past four decades know how the story ends, but Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery are still able to ratchet up the right amount of tick-tock tension. The joy is in the journey, with dramatic scrambling within Nike as Knight weighs happy shareholders vs. being a shoe company maverick and Deloris maintaining her steely facade as the Jordans meet all the potential suitors. Even though we’re talking about corporate brands here, the competition between Converse, Adidas and Nike is tantamount to a Lakers vs. Celtics playoff game and Affleck really leans into it in crowd-pleasing fashion.

On screen, Affleck’s bare-footed honcho is one of several colorful supporting turns that lift “Air.” Jason Bateman co-stars as a snarky Nike marketing man with real stakes in Jordan’s potential signing, Matthew Maher is enjoyably eccentric as the shoe-designing mad scientist who hatches the legendary footwear, and Tucker brings a comedic side to the movie as White, who along with assistant Olympic coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans) are key figures in Jordan’s ultimate choice.

New movies this week: Watch Ben Affleck's 'Hypnotic,' stream Jennifer Lopez's 'The Mother'

Damon and Davis together are phenomenal: Sonny doesn’t take no for an answer when it comes to this once-in-a-lifetime player while Deloris is clear-eyed and honest about her boy’s future and how valuable he truly is. Interestingly, Affleck presents Jordan as a mostly passive participant, a character whose face you never see, instead focusing on the wheels turning around him. (Jordan's hoop skills do get featured in one sequence that both gives an important moment weight while also in a way taking away from it. Your mileage may vary depending on your MJ fandom.)

“Live by Night” aside, Affleck’s directorial record is pretty impressive and “Air” feels like his most inspired effort to date, an underdog story with the greatest basketball player of all time at its heart.

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Air review – Ben Affleck and Matt Damon drop the ball in Michael Jordan shoe drama

Affleck’s dramatisation of the bid to get Jordan to endorse Nike’s radical new sneaker almost ignores the most compelling character

T here’s a lively all-star lineup here and, theoretically at any rate, a great true story from American sports with all the relatability your heart could desire. But this film winds up looking like the most expensive in-house corporate promo in history: shallow, parochial and obtuse. By the time the credits roll, we’re apparently supposed to be euphoric – not so much at individual sporting achievement, but at all the billions of dollars that Nike has been making.

In the mid-80s, a Nike executive called Sonny Vaccaro dreamed of signing up basketball star Michael Jordan to promote the revolutionary new Air Jordan sneaker, which was to be designed entirely for the basketball player – an integral part of his brand identity. Converse and Adidas had more money to offer, so Vaccaro drove to Jordan’s family home in North Carolina on a risky mission to bypass Jordan’s lawyers, agent and management team and instead befriend Jordan’s formidable mother, Deloris.

Matt Damon gives a cordially undemanding performance as Vaccaro, but Michael’s mother Deloris Jordan is played by Egot legend Viola Davis with all the charisma and force you’d expect – which is to say, more charisma and force than the rest of the cast put together. For some reason, however, she is hardly in the movie at all. The relationship between her and Vaccaro doesn’t really feature, and her personal life with her husband, James (Julius Tennon), is evidently not interesting enough to merit much or any screen time - unlike all the grinning, besuited execs such as Nike CEO Phil Knight (played by director Ben Affleck), marketing director Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), Nike’s NBA liaison Howard White (Chris Tucker) and Jordan’s own aggressive sub-Jerry-Maguire agent David Falk (Chris Messina).

Jordan himself does not appear on screen, which is an interesting and legitimate artistic decision, but his mother, the most compelling character, is reduced to a cameo. Air could have an audience with diehard basketball fans, but it’s frustrating. It might, however, be interesting to show it as a double bill with One Man and His Shoes , Yemi Bamiro’s recent documentary about the Air Jordan phenomenon.

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“Air,” Reviewed: It’s Fun to Spend Time with These People, but We Don’t Know Much About Them

By Richard Brody

“Air” is a meaningful movie but an unsatisfying one. 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. 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 story of cultural change, of the invention of a ubiquitous style and its wider implications. 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. Rather than magnifying these characters, the close view diminishes them, elides their accomplishments from society at large, and renders them a mere success story .

The film delivers its own backstory. (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. 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. The company is seeking endorsements from incoming rookies chosen in that year’s N.B.A. draft, and has committed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be spread among multiple players. But Sonny is fixated on the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket, concentrating the entire sum on one incoming player: Michael Jordan, taken third in the draft, by the Chicago Bulls.

Sonny’s plan poses a large risk to the company; his colleagues, other executives, and the company’s C.E.O., Phil Knight (Affleck), are leery of the plan. Moreover, Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), is guiding the athlete toward either of Nike’s two bigger and richer competitors. So, aided by wise counsel from two Black men—Howard White (Chris Tucker), the only Black executive at Nike who figures in the film, and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), a prominent college-basketball coach who’s also Sonny’s longtime friend—Sonny makes an end run around both David and Phil and takes his pitch for Nike directly to the de-facto boss of Jordan’s business concerns: the athlete’s mother, Deloris (Viola Davis), at the family home, in Wilmington, North Carolina. (Michael, played by Damian Young, appears only as a background character.)

The question of why in the world this quest is of any dramatic significance is rooted in the three prime lines of drama that the movie’s script, by Alex Convery, boldly sketches: Sonny’s quest, Deloris’s quest, and Phil’s quest. The movie rushes by agreeably because its story is constructed three-dimensionally; every action, every moment, is plotted simultaneously on three lines of effort, which don’t all cohere into a single shape until the happy ending.

Sonny sparks the action as the only sports marketer who recognizes Jordan as not just a very talented player but a great one, because of the combined superiority of Jordan’s athletic ability and unique sense of will, determination, even destiny. Affleck cannily, even cagily, reveals the insight on which Sonny’s judgment is based, in a scene that’s among the movie’s most enticing. Sonny watches, over and over, a videotape of Jordan’s signature moment in college ball—a championship-winning shot that he hit in 1982. Shortly thereafter, Sonny forces Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), an executive who runs marketing, to watch the same snippet of tape. Sonny explains that he sees hidden in it, in plain sight, Jordan’s awareness that he’ll be getting the ball on a planned play, his relaxed confidence in taking a shot that’s critical to his own career, his coach’s career, and the team’s fortunes. It’s the quality that Sonny defines as greatness, and he can detect it both as a student of the game and an insightful psychologist (like a filmmaker who perceives the transcendent star quality of an untested actor). That intuition is what drives Sonny’s all-out effort to recruit Jordan for Nike.

When Deloris is convinced that Nike is the right choice, she adds a contractual stipulation that is both an inspiration and a grand, even historic, declaration of principle: that, in addition to his fee, her son be paid a percentage of every sale of an Air Jordan shoe, anywhere in the world. The principle, of course, is that the athlete is no mere adornment for the brand but, rather, the prime source of the shoe’s value, not an amplification to the business but the crucial participant in it. The moral essence of her insistence is that the athlete is entitled to a part of the wealth that they create—and the political implication, unvoiced but resonant, is that Black athletes should have a share of the vast wealth that they’re creating for white-run businesses.

Affleck, both as an actor and a director, emphasizes Phil’s idiosyncratic temperament and his co-creation of Nike as a reflection of his personality. (This approach is reflected in the deployment of the company’s aphoristic statement of principles, which are quoted onscreen and illustrated in dramatic scenes.) Yet, after the company went public in 1980, Phil is beholden to a board of directors, who, with an eye on the bottom line, scrutinize his decisions and could even fire him. Sonny asserts that the spirit of the company is at risk of being lost if Phil loses confidence in his own judgment (which is to say, in Sonny) and yields to corporate routine, boardroom prudence, and business-school calculations. Consider Sonny a filmmaker and Phil a producer.

That analogy, far from being merely a hint of Affleck and Damon’s personal investment in the story of “Air,” is at the core of Affleck’s direction. The drama is something like a parody and a perversion of auteurism—a top-down and mastermind-centric view of the recruitment of Jordan, one that takes little interest in the wide range of activities involved in the project and in the development of the shoe, little interest in who’ll be buying the shoe and what it will mean to the buyer. Howard underscores the market importance of basketball shoes because of the racial gap in the running-shoe market, joking that Black people are unlikely to go jogging for fear of being mistaken for fleeing suspects. It’s a line of dialogue that does a huge amount of work, in lieu of drama.

“Air” is a story of fashion, of music, of sports and athleticism themselves as a kind of style and even of artistic expression; of the sudden ubiquity of popular musicians by way of music videos and MTV; of the relationship of American racial politics to style; and of the rapid and definitive emergence of hip-hop as the prime national and international music. The shoes are being marketed foremost to young Black consumers, yet the prospective buyers are never heard from, hardly even seen. The only young Black character in the film (other than Michael Jordan) is a clerk (Asanté Deshon) at a 7-Eleven, a basketball fan who opines to Sonny that Jordan is “too small for the N.B.A.” (Later in the film, after Jordan has become a star, he tells Sonny, “We all knew.”) The point is, doubtless unintentionally, a sordid one: that, in the street, the prevailing wisdom holds sway, but, to lead public opinion, to create a phenomenon, it takes the leadership of an expert—someone like Sonny.

The process that “Air” details is nonetheless absorbing. Sonny’s acumen extends beyond the basketball court into the business side, as when, at his first meeting with Deloris, he’s both unusually candid and insightful about the disadvantages that a contract with Converse or Adidas would pose to Michael. (Her confidence in Sonny’s judgment is reinforced when his predictions about the course of the Jordans’ meetings with those companies’ executives prove correct.) Sonny stage-manages the actual business of persuasion—the pitch that Nike will formally make to the Jordans, Deloris and James (Julius Tennon, Davis’s real-life husband)—and it involves a twist of clumsiness that’s amusing, and a burst of inspiration that’s thrilling. (I won’t spoil the backstory, which involves a lesson that George, as a long-ago witness to a historic event, imparts to Sonny.)

“Air” is a dialogue-rich film, as befits a movie about negotiations, and the dialogue is delivered with flair and enthusiasm, not least because its actors contributed greatly to crafting it. The script is the first by Convery to be produced, and he reports (in a fascinating interview by Kate Erbland ) that Affleck and the cast—mainly Damon, Tucker, and Davis—subjected the screenplay to a high level of revision. Tucker wrote most of his own dialogue, and Davis wrote the most important part of hers. (Don’t trust the credits: in general, directors and actors with significant artistry and clout are surely doing a significant amount of writing.) Damon is both commanding and miscast, both conspicuously gleeful in the role of Sonny yet all too breezy and lacking spice and rough edges; it’s Davis who, in a relatively little amount of screen time, gives the film its anchoring performance.

However, the movie’s florid talk doesn’t only serve the drama or provide the sheer pleasure of the back-and-forth. The talk fills the movie like dramatic spacing and padding, delivering moods—man-to-man ballbusting, sentimental bonding, earnest confessions—as a way of marking time and building suspense without actually conveying much about characters, their experiences and their thoughts, or yielding the screen to characters or situations who aren’t at the center of the story and the top of the pyramid.

The most crucial of those additional presences is Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), the shoemaker. He’s at once a scientist and an artist, an engineer and a fashion designer, who cocoons himself in his underlit, laboratory-like studio. Inspired by Arthur Ashe’s line of tennis racquets, Sonny wants Peter to make a shoe to Jordan’s own specifications; as I watched the movie, I was intensely curious about what this notion would mean in practice. But the movie spends very little time in the laboratory or with Peter. When Sonny goes to see what Peter has come up with, the engineer proudly declares that he has achieved something new: “It is the logic of water.” It’s a nice line, but what does he mean? It’s negatively exemplary of the film that its crucially physical aspect—the one where the foot goes into the shoe, where the rubber hits the road—is elided in favor of a one-liner and a conceptual hand wave.

Lack of physicality is perhaps the defining trait of Affleck’s direction, both here and in his Oscar-winning “ Argo .” (Both films were the result of a script from the Black List , the Hollywood honor roll of notable unproduced screenplays.) What Affleck creates, as a director, is fishbowl cinema, observing his characters’ action without any seeming point of contact with the actors, without any sense of presence, through walls of glass thicker and more airtight than those of his camera’s lenses. His sense of story is so specific that he displays it whole and closed off, without any apparent curiosity about what goes into it and what arises from it; his conception of characters is so closely tied to dramatic necessity that he neglects to consider them as people. The movie’s substance remains largely implicit; its pleasures are partial, detached, and superficial. It offers little context, background, personality, or anything that risks distracting from the show. ♦

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• Cast & crew
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Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan.

• Ben Affleck
• Alex Convery
• Jason Bateman
• 425 User reviews
• 271 Critic reviews
• 73 Metascore
• 5 wins & 47 nominations

• Sonny Vaccaro

• Rob Strasser

• Phil Knight

• Deloris Jordan

• James Jordan

• Michael Jordan
• (as Damian Young)

• Howard White

• Peter Moore

• Horst Dassler

• Kathe Dassler

• John Fisher

• John O'Neill

• George Raveling
• 7-Eleven Clerk

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• Trivia Though Michael Jordan was not directly involved in the film, Ben Affleck consulted him numerous times to get details on how to accurately portray the story. According to Affleck, Jordan's only two requests were that Viola Davis play his mother and that his longtime friend Howard White be included in the film. Affleck always wanted to work with Chris Tucker , so he was cast as White. Tucker was also friends with White, and Affleck gave him a lot of flexibility for his performance.
• Goofs The "Just Do It" slogan didn't come out until 1987. It was created in 1987 by Wieden + Kennedy to accompany Nike's first major television campaign, which included commercials for running, walking, cross-training, basketball and women's fitness.

Sonny Vaccaro : [to Michael Jordan] Forget about the shoes, forget about the money. You're going to make enough money, it's not going to matter. Money can buy you almost anything, it can't buy you immortality. That, you have to earn. I'm going to look you in the eyes and I'm gonna tell you the future. You were cut from your high school basketball team. You willed your way to the NBA. You're gonna win championships. It's an American story, and that's why Americans are gonna love it. People are going to build you up, and God are they going to, because when you're great and new, we love you. Man, we'll build you up into something that doesn't even exist. You're going to change the fucking world. But you know what? Once they've built you as high as they possibly can, they're gonna tear you back down - it's the most predictable pattern. We build you into something that doesn't exist, and that means you have to try to be that thing all day, every day. That's how it works. And we do it again, and again, and again. And I'm going to tell you the truth. You're going to be attacked, betrayed, exposed and humiliated. And you'd survive that. A lot of people can climb that mountain. It's the way down that breaks them, 'cause that's the moment when you are truly alone. And what would you do then? Can you summon the will to fight on, through all the pain, and rise again? Who are you Michael? That will be the defining question of your life. And I think you already know the answer, and that's why we're all here. A shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it. Then it has meaning. The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness. We need you in these shoes not so you have meaning in your life, but so that we have meaning in ours. Everyone at this table will be forgotten as soon as our time here is up - except for you. You're gonna be remembered forever, because some things are eternal. You're Michael Jordan, and your story is gonna make us want to fly.

• Connections Featured in CBS News Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley: Episode #45.26 (2023)
• Soundtracks Money for Nothing Written by Mark Knopfler , Sting (as Gordon Matthew Sumner) Performed by Dire Straits Courtesy of Warner Records By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User reviews 425

• Mar 28, 2023
• How long is Air? Powered by Alexa
• April 5, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Los Angeles, California, USA
• Amazon Studios
• Artists Equity
• Mandalay Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $90,000,000 (estimated)
• $52,460,106
• $14,456,279
• Apr 9, 2023
• $90,060,106

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• Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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In Theaters

• April 5, 2023
• Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro; Ben Affleck as Phil Knight; Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser; Marlon Wayans as George Raveling; Chris Messina as David Falk; Chris Tucker as Howard White; Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan; Matthew Maher as Peter Moore; Julius Tennon as James R. Jordan Sr.

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• May 12, 2023
• Ben Affleck

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Movie Review

Even though he was the third pick in 1984’s NBA draft, Michael Jordan was no sure thing. Just ask the guy who drafted him.

“We wish Jordan were 7 feet, but he isn’t,” said Chicago Bulls General Manager Rod Thorn. “There just wasn’t a center available. What can you do? Jordan isn’t going to turn this franchise around. I wouldn’t ask him to.”  

You can’t really blame him for his skepticism. Some people thought Jordan was too tall to be a shooting guard, too thin to be a power forward. They worried whether he could (ironically) shoot the ball. And even those who believed Jordan would become a great player, he’d be just one of many.

But in the movie Air , three people believed that Michael Jordan could become better than great.

One: Michael Jordan.

Two: his mom.

Three: Sonny Vaccaro, an executive for Nike, a company best known in 1984 for its running shoes.

In the world of basketball, Nike was barely on the map. Converse was the big dog. All the NBA’s best—from Magic Johnson to Larry Bird to Julius “Dr. J” Erving himself—wore them. Adidas was the trendsetting second fiddle, quickly becoming a brand darling in the hip-hop world. When he played college hoops at North Carolina, Jordan wore Converse on the court and loved his Adidas off it.

Nike? That brand that made shoes for jogging suburbanites? Puleeeze.

But Sonny watched the tape of Michael Jordan and saw greatness in the making. He had an audacious plan to bring the basketball guard into the Nike fold.

His job, his future and perhaps the fate of Nike itself hung in the balance of Sonny’s corporate equivalent of a half-court shot.

But hey, as some guy was destined to say, You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.

Some guy named Michael Jordan.

Positive Elements

It’s hard to quantify most of what we see in this movie as inherently good or bad—other than to say that some folks made good business decisions around a very good basketball player.

Still, Sonny hints at the adversity that Michael had to overcome to become that very good basketball player. Cut from his high school basketball team, Michael willed himself to greatness (Sonny says).

And we do see a strong work ethic in play, as well. Sonny and a couple of other associates spend all weekend at the office preparing for an important presentation. And when the day of the presentation comes and Sonny’s worried that he hasn’t done enough, Nike’s Director of Marketing Rob Strasser reminds Sonny that he’s only human. “Sometimes the most you can do is all you can do,” he tells him.

But Rob also reminds Sonny of what else is at stake if Sonny’s gambit doesn’t work: a lot of people’s jobs. Rob, who’s divorced, tells Sonny about his 7-year-old daughter, whom he only gets to see on Sunday afternoons. Every Sunday, he brings her a pair of Nikes as a way to show his love for her. And while we’d say (and Rob would admit) that these gifts smack a bit of bribery, Rob’s desire to connect with his daughter is real. If Rob gets fired (which’ll likely happen if Nike doesn’t sign Michael), Rob says he’ll likely still buy his daughter shoes as long as he can. It’s perhaps only then that Sonny realizes it’s not just his neck on the line: It’s an office-full of others. And maybe those necks are more important than his own.

From real-world clips, it’s clear that the real Michael Jordan loved his mother, and we see evidence of that love and respect in the movie, too.

Spiritual Elements

After Sonny spots something in Michael’s game tapes that make him sure that he’s the guy Nike needs to sign, he barges into Rob’s office. “I found him,” Sonny says.

“Who’ that, Jesus?” Rob asks facetiously.

It’s a throwaway line, and yet the movie gently suggests there’s something almost divine about Michael’s game. “Some things are eternal,” Sonny says, adding that Michael’s talents will be remembered long after he and everyone else at Nike are gone and forgotten.

Nike is named after the Greek goddess of victory. There’s a statue of a Buddha in Nike CEO Phil Knight’s office, and Sonny warns him not to rattle off any “Buddhist aphorisms.”

Sexual Content

David Falk, Michael Jordan’s agent, makes some very descriptive, somewhat sexually oriented threats toward Sonny when he believes the exec is going around his back. (He says, for instance, that he’ll have sex with Sonny’s skull.)

You see a few scandalous real-life flash-forward headlines about Michael Jordan—including some relating to his marital infidelity and divorce—land on screen.

Violent Content

Again, through headlines seen very briefly on screen, we learn that Michael’s father will ultimately be shot to death.

Crude or Profane Language

Phil Knight mentions that the name Nike was chosen because focus groups showed a preference for four-letter words. “I like four-letter words,” Sonny adds.

Boy, does he. And boy, so do a lot of other people. The f-word is used at least 65 times. The s-word is spoken another 16 times. And we also hear numerous uses of “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss”. God’s name is misused three times, once with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

A couple of characters drink and talk at a bar.

Other Negative Elements

In his push to sign Michael Jordan to a contract, Sonny also pushes into some questionably unethical territory. He bypasses Michael’s agent. He commits Nike financially to more than his boss agreed upon. When that boss, Phil Knight, accuses Sonny of rampant egoism, Sonny points out that Phil’s the only guy in the company who drives a grape-purple Porsche.

Sonny also regularly takes business-trip detours to Las Vegas and gambles heavily. We see a scene of him playing craps. Headlines remind us of Jordan’s own gambling habit. We hear that the late founder of Adidas was a member of the Hitler Youth Corps. A conversation takes place in the bathroom. We hear references to the alleged unfair labor practices Nike used to make its shoes.

The Michael Jordan/Nike partnership is considered one of the most revolutionary, and lucrative, relationships in sports history. Both the player and the shoe company have profited enormously together, and both continue to make crates full of money from the deal—even though Jordan retired 20 years ago.

The real charm in Air —besides, of course, its boardroom full of top-notch actors and totally awesome 1980s soundtrack—is rewinding the clock, to when Michael Jordan was an unproven NBA rookie and Nike was just a scrappy shoemaker. In fact, the only one that Jordan refused to even consider . It’s a fascinating story. And even if we’re just told one exaggerated side of it (the Internet will disgorge a host of other sides if you ask), there’s no question that the Oscar-winning Ben Affleck knows how to direct a powerful, engaging film. That’s only fitting, I suppose, given the powerful, engaging athlete at its center.

But it’s fitting in another way, too.

Give Jordan his props as perhaps the greatest basketball player—and one of the greatest athletes—of all time. But we know that the same competitive fire that drove Jordan to greatness could make him, sometimes, kind of a jerk. His ledger is filled not just with highlight-reel shots, but tawdry headlines. Sonny tells us that Americans love to build up our heroes and tear them down, but let’s be honest: Our heroes are often complicit in their own deconstruction.

Air , too, can soar—surprisingly high, considering its most riveting scenes take place in Nike’s boardrooms and cubicles. But when it falls, it hits hard. The language can be as blue as the original Air Jordan shoe (which, in a bit of poetic license, the film suggests started out red). Some of the ethics we see aren’t as praiseworthy as the film would like us to believe.

Jordan once famously said that he’s missed more than 9,000 shots in his career—including 26 would-be game winners. Air misses its share of shots as well. Does it miss enough to lose your game? The scoreboard won’t tell you.

Only you can decide.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Summary Air reveals the unbelievable game-changing partnership between a then-rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division which revolutionized the world of sports and contemporary culture with the Air Jordan brand. This moving story follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the u ... Read More

Directed By : Ben Affleck

Written By : Alex Convery

Where to Watch

Sonny Vaccaro

Jason bateman, rob strasser, ben affleck, phil knight, chris messina, viola davis, deloris jordan, julius tennon, james jordan, damian delano young, michael jordan, chris tucker, howard white, matthew maher, peter moore, gustaf skarsgård, horst dassler, barbara sukowa, kathe dassler, john fisher, joel gretsch, john o'neill, michael o'neill, marlon wayans, george raveling, asanté deshon, 7-eleven clerk, billy smith, al madrigal, jackson damon, dan bucatinsky, critic reviews.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Air’ on Prime Video, Ben Affleck’s Amusing and Nostalgic Behind-the-Brand Sports Saga

Where to stream:.

• Ben Affleck

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Make no mistake, Air ( now streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) wants us to shed a tear and pump our fist for A BRAND. Sure, human beings are involved, but the human beings in this BOATS ( Based On A True Story , yo) movie created a logo and some catchphrases that pretty much everyone of a certain vintage knows, because they were, and still are, so damn pervasive in American culture. The movie is Ben Affleck’s first directorial effort since Live by Night , a movie we forgot existed, but we didn’t forget Argo , because it won him a damn Oscar, a damn good reminder that he’s damn talented behind the camera. Affleck also co-stars with his producing partner Matt Damon, to tell the story of how an athletic-shoe corporation talked a basketball player into an endorsement deal – a basketball player who’s now considered the greatest athlete of all time in any sport. His name is You Know Who. We never see You Know Who’s face in this movie, which has some people perplexed – maybe even some of them who made the film an $85 million at the box office – but keep in mind, the makers of movies do such things for a reason, which we’ll suss out here today. 

AIR : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s 1984, and this movie will remind you of that fact with its persistent soundtrack of the hits of the era. Cyndi Lauper, Night Ranger, Bruce Springsteen, Mike and the Mechanics, Run DMC – all covered, and then some. It opens with Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing,’ which may be thematically appropriate, or might just sound cool and get us revved up, and doesn’t warrant any more thought than that. We see a montage of all kinds of Very Incredibly 1984 Things: Reagan, Where’s the Beef, breakdancing, Cabbage Patch Kids, VHS, Ghostbusters , Jane Fonda workout tapes… it goes on, and on, and on. Just a deluge. ‘Money for Nothing’ never felt so long. Anyway. We meet Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) in the bleachers of a high school basketball game. He works for Nike as a talent scout, hunting for badass basketballers for endorsement deals. It’s important to note that his flights back to Nike HQ in Oregon often include layovers in Vegas, where it’s established that the guy’s a gambler. He wins some and loses some. This movie is about him winning one. A big one.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – there’s a lot of drama and witty dialogue to get through before Sonny lands his big fish. In the business of Big Basketball Shoe, Nike is in third place behind Table Time and Allied Biscuit. Er, I mean, Converse, who dominates the market, and Adidas. We meet the character Chris Tucker plays, and I’m not sure what his purpose here is besides us getting a chuckle out of Chris Tucker sharing scenes in a movie with Damon and Affleck. Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) banter-argues with Sonny about the basketball endorsement budget, which is miniscule. Nike is foremost a “jogging company,” and Phil has to answer to the board and then hop in his metallic-purple Porsche and drive home to take off his socks and shoes and do many hours of yoga or whatever. Very rich and very earthy, this guy.

Jason Bateman is in this movie, too – have I mentioned that? He’s Rob Strasser, a marketing honcho. He powwows with Sonny and the other scouts, hoping to target potential NBA draft picks. Some of them are funny, Guys who weren’t shit, and other Guys who are Hakeem Olajuwon and John Stockton and a kid from North Carolina who the Bulls picked at no. 3. The competition will hoover up the good ones, no doubt, fueled by bigger budgets and prestige. Maybe they should go after Charles Barkley? Nah, “no one wants to see Barkley on TV” is the sentiment, proof that whoever wrote this script (guilty: Alex Convery) likes to write funny lines from here in the future.

And then Sonny goes home to his sad TV dinner and sits in the dark watching game tape over and over again. Was he ever married? Kids? Probably not. He’s married to SPORTS. Or SHOES. Or maybe SPORTS SHOES is more accurate? Whatever. The game tape: It’s Jordan, draining the game-winner in the NCAA national championship. Swish. Rewind. Swish. Rewind. Swish. And Sonny has a feeling about this guy. He does his damnedest to convince Rob and Phil that Nike has to take everything it has and give it to Jordan. In fact, they’ll make a shoe specifically for him . Real “he doesn’t wear the shoe, he IS the shoe” drivel that’s easy to say from 39 years later when we know what happens. So Sonny makes phone calls to Jordan’s agent (Chris Messina) and drops in at his parents’ house in North Carolina for an intense convo with his mother Deloris (Viola Davis!) and goes down to the basement of Nike offices to consult the weirdo Matthew Maher (Peter Moore) about designing the – wait for it – no, keep waiting – one more em dash – AIR JORDAN. Will they woo Jordan away from Adidas? You know the answer to that. You also know it’s gonna take a goddamn SPEECH first, though.  

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Between Air and Adam Sandler basketball-guy movie Hustle , basketball scouts live unglamorous lives that involve big professional risks with high reward. Air also brought to mind Jerry Maguire and Space Jam , for obvious reasons.

Performance Worth Watching: Of course Viola Davis comes in and substances-up the place in only a handful of scenes, playing a mother who knows what’s right . She plays the coolest head in the room, probably because she’s the coolest head in any room, fictional or non – such is her presence, as an actor of significance in a room full of talented movie stars.

Memorable Dialogue: Variations on a theme:

“A shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into it.” – Sonny “A shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into it.” – Deloris

Sex and Skin: None. 

Our Take: Yeah, the hell with Air for making us feel dramatically invested in the origin of a grossly capitalist endeavor that, per the movie’s postscript, earns the athlete in question $400 million annually in “passive income” – if you don’t know what that is, look it up and feel free to be infuriated – and turned an already large corporation into a massive world-eater. And to hell with it for being so damn entertaining, fueled by its inspired cast, consistently witty dialogue and that thing that has no value whatsoever but is so intoxicating to pretty much all of us, what’s it called again? Right: Nostalgia. F— nostalgia. That pop-cultural siren song that’s sold to us wholesale like the pallet-sized crate of Doritos at Costco. F— it especially when it earworms us with REO Speedwagon. It’s just cruel and soulless and cruel, and it doesn’t fight fair.

So enjoy the gross cognitive dissonance that comes with this movie, which kind of sits in awe and praise of capitalism, and maybe could only be made by people who are already rich, or want to get rich by making a movie (it’s Convery’s only IMDb credit so far, and hopefully not his last). It’s kind of clueless in that way, like a lolling-tongue lap dog eager to please and oblivious to criticism whether it’s coming or going. But it’s also a wiseass, all too aware of its jokes-in-retrospect, all the irony it ratatats at us knowing we’ll feel smarter than the characters who naysay Nike’s endeavor; we’re also skeptical of Sonny’s prognostication powers, because he sometimes speaks as if he’s trying not to let on that he’s a time traveler from four decades later. The character is more than a bit artificial in that way, although the movie goes out of its way to show him crossing the double-yellow line to pass other cars because, you know, he’s a risk-taker! And this deal is a gamble on top of a gamble on top of a gamble! And what’s more engrossing than watching a guy stick his neck waaayyyy out there, even though we know his head stays attached? I don’t have a good answer for that, but I think it’s mostly because the film is spirited, energetic and effortlessly funny.

Affleck-the-director handles the moving parts of this story like the pro he is. He also has come into his own as an actor in recent years, showing previously uncharted depth of character in supporting roles like this one, The Tender Bar and The Last Duel , and as the lead in The Way Back . He’s mostly frosting in Air though, with Damon showing his usual crackling populist appeal in nearly every shot of the movie, Bateman being pragmatic and funny in a middleman role, Davis owning her every scene and a fraction of the back of Damian Delano Young’s head playing said basketball player (who’s otherwise only seen in archival footage). Why the hell does a movie about Whatsisname not factor Whatsisname into the story? We can speculate: We already know his side of the story. He’s not the story, he’s just the catalyst for it. And it keeps the film focused – focused on printing the legend, because when all is said and done, and he’s dust and we’re dust and our children’s children are dust, more people will recognize the logo than the face. We’re mortal; the brand is not.

Our Call: Air is about money. Money, and all the dumb shit that has to do with having it and acquiring it and using it to get more of it. What does it say about us that we’re so entertained by stories about it? Don’t think about it – and I know this is a riff on a corporate slogan, but the cheap-ass joy of riffing off it is undeniable: Just STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

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Common sense media reviewers.

Fun "underdogs save Nike" story has strong language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie is a "triumph of the underdog" story in

Even though Sonny Vaccaro comes up with the idea t

Focuses largely on White men, with more diversity

Arguing, shouting.

Sex-related dialogue. Playboy and Hustler magazine

Strong, frequent language includes "f--k," "s--t,"

The Nike logo, shoes, slogans, and various product

Social drinking: beers at restaurant.

Parents need to know that Air is based on the true story of how a once sinking Nike corporation rocketed to the top by making a deal with NBA superstar Michael Jordan and creating their bestselling Air Jordan sneakers. The Ben Affleck-directed drama follows a formula but has an undeniable underdog energy…

Positive Messages

The movie is a "triumph of the underdog" story in which people who are lacking money and resources must rely on their ingenuity to succeed. It's pretty simple, but it can still feel inspiring.

Positive Role Models

Even though Sonny Vaccaro comes up with the idea that saves the company, and his unique charm and know-how help him navigate the various pitfalls that occur, he's presented as a fairly flawed person. He gambles, swears a lot, doesn't have healthy habits, and can be fairly abrasive to those around him.

Diverse Representations

Focuses largely on White men, with more diversity in key supporting roles. Chris Tucker plays Howard White, a high-ranking Black executive at Nike, and Marlon Wayans plays George Raveling, a Black athlete-turned-Nike employee. Viola Davis and Julius Tennon play Michael Jordan's parents (Michael himself is mostly kept off-camera); Deloris Jordan is portrayed as a force to be reckoned with. She has agency and is a master negotiator. Actor Matthew Maher, who has a speaking difference as the result of cleft palate surgery, plays Peter Moore, the genius shoemaker who builds the Air Jordan.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sex-related dialogue. Playboy and Hustler magazines (with brown paper slip cover) seen on shelf at convenience store. Joke about STDs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong, frequent language includes "f--k," "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "damn," "badass," "stupid," "nuts," "nutsack," "balls," "dumb." Exclamatory use of "Jesus Christ."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The Nike logo, shoes, slogans, and various products are mentioned or on display throughout. Adidas and Converse brands are also mentioned and shown. Various 1980s products (Kodak, Wendy's, 7-Eleven, Slurpee, Wheaties, Wonder Bread, Trivial Pursuit, etc.) are seen in an opening montage and in the background.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Air is based on the true story of how a once sinking Nike corporation rocketed to the top by making a deal with NBA superstar Michael Jordan and creating their bestselling Air Jordan sneakers. The Ben Affleck -directed drama follows a formula but has an undeniable underdog energy. Language is the biggest issue, with frequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," and more. There's also sex-related dialogue (including jokes about STDs) and glimpses of adult magazines (protected by brown slipcovers) in a convenience store. Characters drink socially -- i.e., beers in a restaurant -- and the Nike logo, shoes, slogans, and various products are mentioned or on display throughout. Matt Damon , Jason Bateman , Chris Messina , and Viola Davis co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (8)

Based on 10 parent reviews

Lots of language but overall a great movie

Lots of language, what's the story.

In AIR, it's the early 1980s, and the Nike Corporation is struggling behind competitors Converse and Adidas. Marketing executive Rob Strasser ( Jason Bateman ) calls a meeting of the basketball division to try to figure out how to spend their meager $250,000 annual budget. He urges them to pick out three lower-tier players to work with, but fellow exec Sonny Vaccaro ( Matt Damon ) insists that this way will lead to failure. He has a more audacious idea: Why not spend all the money trying to get star player Michael Jordan? And, rather than having him wear just any old shoe, why not offer him his own shoe, the Air Jordan? To make this happen, Sonny must get around his boss, company CEO Phil Knight ( Ben Affleck ), and slimy agent David Falk ( Chris Messina ), as well as convince Jordan's mother, Deloris ( Viola Davis ). The plan seems on the verge of success, but the Jordan family makes one more demand -- something that's never been done before.

Is It Any Good?

Directed capably (if not excitingly) by Ben Affleck , this Great American "triumph of the underdog" story isn't exactly a slam dunk, but it's at least a solid layup. Air relies on many "sitting in a room and talking" shots, as well as several phone conversation scenes, and then tries to pump these moments up with a large selection of period songs, one of which seems to pop up about every five minutes. And there's too much dialogue that "predicts" the future, designed so that viewers can nod along in recognition. Air isn't a dynamic movie, but perhaps thanks to the fine performances, the energy is there, and it becomes undeniably exciting. Plus, this isn't a movie about amassing great wealth. It's more about regular folks simply keeping their jobs (and, in some cases, their identities), and about a Black family setting a new precedent so that others may follow. Ultimately, it's the characters who count in Air , and we get to know them well enough that their setbacks and victories actually mean something.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Air turns the Nike corporation into an underdog that viewers may find themselves rooting for. What methods does it use to spark this feeling?

What's at stake here? Is money the goal, or is there something more?

Did you notice examples of positive diverse representation in the movie? What about stereotypes ?

Does watching the movie make you want to rush out and buy Nike shoes? Why, or why not? Do you think that was the intent in any way?

How does this story, which is set in the 1980s, resemble today's world of celebrities and influencers ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 5, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : September 12, 2023
• Cast : Matt Damon , Viola Davis , Jason Bateman
• Director : Ben Affleck
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : Amazon Studios
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 112 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language throughout
• Last updated : October 7, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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6 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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There’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again. That’s what makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved.

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‘aggro dr1ft’.

This hallucinatory romp directed by Harmony Korine conveys the journey of an assassin entirely through thermal imaging with added digital effects.

Whether it’s the thermal imaging or the augmentation, the visual style renders eyes practically invisible, leaving the actors without an important means of communication. … That absence might account for why “Aggro Dr1ft” is so unengaging on a narrative level, but the monotony might also have to have something to do with the protagonist, a hit man extraordinaire who is also (gasp) a family man. The world’s greatest assassin has been saddled with the world’s most sophomoric internal monologue. “I am a solitary hero. I am alone. I am a solitary hero. Alone,” he mumbles.

Think ‘On the Road,’ but for Gen-Z.

‘gasoline rainbow’.

Five teenagers embark on a road trip to a “party at the end of the world” and encounter many fellow misfits along the way in the latest from filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross.

There’s an uncommon sweetness to this film, which is less about running away from something and more about discovering the road of life is littered with goodness, if you know where to look. There’s a loose, languorous quality to “Gasoline Rainbow,” which the Rosses shot using a mostly improvised format, a collaboration between actors and filmmakers. It feels like a home movie, or a documentary — a capture of a slice of life in which there’s no plot other than whatever happens on the road ahead.

A destination wedding that goes nowhere.

‘mother of the bride’.

At a surprise last-minute wedding, the mother of the bride (Lana, played by Brooke Shields) gets another surprise when she discovers that her daughter is engaged to the son of her ex-beau, Will (Benjamin Bratt).

“Mother of the Bride” is directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) with an apparent allergy to verisimilitude. Early on, we are told that the opulent Thai ceremony will be bankrolled by Emma’s company (she’s an intern) and livestreamed to “millions of eyes.” These fantasies of pomp and circumstance often serve to make Lana and Will’s budding romance feel like a B-story to the action — although that may be a blessing when the best screwball gag this movie can muster is a pickleball shot to the groin.

Watch on Netflix . Read the full review .

Chris Pine goes off the deep end.

In Chris Pine’s directorial debut, he plays a pool cleaner who is enlisted to help uncover a mysterious water heist.

The sure-why-not plot, modeled on the California water grab in “Chinatown,” is less interesting than the charismatic cast that rambles along with Pine on his excellent adventure. Pine’s yarn was savaged when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but the sour response is a bit like getting mad at a golden retriever for rolling around in the grass.

Small drama, big stars.

Seeking asylum, a young Nigerian woman (Letitia Wright of “Black Panther”) navigates the complications of applying for permanent residency in Ireland in this drama from writer-director Frank Berry. Josh O’Connor of “Challengers” also stars.

At the beauty salon where she works, Aisha’s rightly cagey as she listens to her customers. But at the shelter, she turns warm, when she gives makeovers to fellow immigrants. As he did for his award-winning prison film, “Michael Inside,” Berry used nonprofessional actors with intimate experience of the system — here, Ireland’s International Protection Office, which processes asylum applications — he wanted to depict. It’s a gesture that keeps the film from lapsing into melodrama.

Bonus review: A rural throuple

It’s not immediately apparent how courtly intrigue figures in “A Prince” (in theaters) , Pierre Creton’s spellbinding French pastoral drama, though sex, death and domination hang palpably in the film’s crisp, Normandy air.

Creton looks to the divine powers and chivalric codes that fuel swords-and-shields epics like “Game of Thrones,” but whittles these elements down to a mysterious essence. Eventually, the film shifts into explicitly sexual and mythological terrain with a B.D.S.M. edge.

The story is slippery by design, loosely tracking the gay coming-of-age of an apprentice gardener, Pierre-Joseph. Throughout the film, a series of wordless and seductively austere tableaux, he forms bonds with various individuals in his rural community. Multiple narrators speak in retrospect, as if looking back from the afterlife at the characters onscreen.

Pierre-Joseph eventually comes to form a throuple with Alberto and Adrien, his mentors. The naked bodies of these much older gentleman appear suggestively weathered next to their younger lover’s sprightly form. Yet there is no mention of taboo. That passion could bloom in such spontaneous and unexpected forms is part of this enigmatic film’s potency.

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Andy Serkis, the star of the earlier “Planet of the Apes” movies, and Owen Teague, the new lead, discuss the latest film in the franchise , “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

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A searing replay of insurrection, ‘The Sixth’ should be seen by all

The chilling documentary immerses us in the sensations and shock of Jan. 6, 2021. Civics lessons rarely come this disturbing or this convincing.

At first, you may be wondering why A24, the film distributor known for edgy independent fare, is opting not to release “The Sixth” in theaters and is instead sending it straight to streaming services. Having seen the movie, I think I understand.

This chilling documentary by Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine, immersing a viewer in the sounds, sights, sensations and shock of Jan. 6 , 2021, is best watched not at a public screening, with a restive and possibly argumentative audience, but at home, attended to with sober concentration and preferably older children or grandchildren by one’s side. Civics lessons rarely come this disturbing or this convincing.

The Fines, Oscar-winning documentarians (“Inocente,” 2012), have drawn upon an immense trove of news and personal footage to re-create the events of the day-long attempt by Donald Trump supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building and halt the official tabulation of votes that would certify Joe Biden as the 46th president. Images from news cameras, body cameras, security cameras and cellphones have been cut together by editors Jeff Consiglio and Chrystie Martinez Gouz to create an Argus-eyed mosaic of insurrection. A discreetly ominous score by H. Scott Salinas rumbles beneath the sounds of chaos that build from early morning on the 6th and culminate in the breaching of the police line outside the Capitol by a mob estimated at 10,000 and the invasion of its corridors by 1,200 rioters.

“The Sixth” relies on the stories of six narrators who were there, told directly to the camera and in voice-over. Two officers with the D.C. police, Christina Laury and Daniel Hodges, provide harrowing accounts from the white-hot center of the assault, while their boss, Robert J. Contee III, named acting chief of the D.C. police only four days earlier, gives us the broader vantage point. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who had buried his 25-year-old son, Tommy, the day before, recalls events as he saw them from the House chamber, while Erica Loewe, deputy communications director for then-House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), gives us the view from the barricaded congressman’s office as the mob pounds on the door. Finally, news photographer Mel D. Cole was in the crowd of Trump supporters as the day progressed from rally to march to riot, and it’s through his lens and memories that we come closest to the attackers themselves.

These are the true believers in Trump’s Big Lie, and they are terrifying. Mostly male, many of them armed, all of them swollen with self-righteous rage, the rioters are seen as individuals and as a seething, pulsating, unified mass of hate. “It was the crowd that was the weapon,” says Officer Hodges, and in the footage of that day, we see that weapon used to crush him and his fellow officers. The police were assaulted with poles, boards, their own batons and bear spray far more harmful than pepper spray. A rioter screams at Hodges to “give me your helmet! I paid for that helmet!” “These people made it clear that they wanted to kill certain members of Congress,” the officer tells the filmmakers.

Embedded in the mob, photographer Cole documented D.C. police Officer Michael Fanone being beaten with pipes and attacked with a stun gun; Fanone suffered burns, a heart attack and traumatic brain injury. “I came for war, man,” one ebullient rioter tells Cole, who expresses horrified amazement that these were the same people who normally expressed their belief that “blue lives matter.” “Not that day,” he says.

Questions remain unanswered by the film, and they nag at history. Among them: Why did the Defense Department hold back National Guard troops stationed nearby while the battle raged for four hours and Contee was forced to call in local officers from Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey? With their arrival, the tide of battle turned and, in Cole’s words, “It was just weirdly … over.” Loewe recalls being led by police out of the Capitol building and seeing a handcuffed rioter laughing. “It was funny to him,” she says with disbelief.

By contrast, “The Sixth” documents a singular tragedy in the life of America with an immediacy that makes one grateful for recording technology; it’s as though we were privileged to witness the Salem witch trials, the Battle of Gettysburg or the Tulsa race massacre at close secondhand. There should be no sense of celebration in this. “I felt embarrassed for all of us,” says Cole, shaking his head. “For all of America.” A true patriot watches “The Sixth” with a deep sense of shame that this happened to our country and a deeper determination to never let it happen again.

Unrated . Available May 3 for purchase and May 10 for rent on Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube and other platforms. Mob violence, language. 111 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com .

Review: 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' pulls out all the action stops

There's life and art in the ape-verse, but franchise fatigue is sneaking in.

Can you believe it? "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," now thumping its chest in theaters, is the 10th movie in a simian blockbuster franchise that began in 1968 with astronaut Charlton Heston memorably hating on the "damn, dirty apes" to keep their mitts off of him.

Fat chance. Having so far grossed over $2 billion worldwide, the franchise is not quitting. In fact, the most recent epic, 2017's "War for the Planet of the Apes," struck gold with critics and audiences, proving again there was a market for talking apes whose battles with humans reflected themes of racial tension, Cold War politics and animal rights.

The first thing amiss if you loved the last two entries in the franchise, which were directed by Matt Reeves, is the absence of Andy Serkis, the British actor whose motion-capture performance as ape leader Caesar resonated with a power and depth of feeling that felt nearly Shakespearean.

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The new film, the longest ever at two hours and 25 minutes, opens with Caesar's funeral. That's a bummer, though Serkis stayed on as an acting consultant to keep the mo-cap work in peak form. It is. This is one gorgeous looking ape extravaganza, full of a heat and heart. But a slackness has crept into the storytelling that needs monitoring

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The script skips ahead 300 years to show that the score is now apes 10, humans zero on the scoreboard for planet control. A virus has rotted the brains of humans, who have lost the ability to talk. With their most dangerous threat sidelined, the apes mostly fight with each other.

Set in the ruggedly beautiful Pacific Northwest, but shot in Australia, "Kingdom" shows skyscrapers and other man-made wonders covered in weeds and neglect.

Among the good apes is Noa (a terrific Owen Teague), a member of the Eagle Clan, which nurtures eagle eggs and all things Mother Nature. Noa reacts badly when he sees a human female named Mae (a standout Freya Allan) stealing clan food. But his peaceful instincts prevail, ignited by Yoda-ish old orangutan Raka (Peter Macon is a hoot).

Real trouble comes in the form of a warlike tribe of armored ape horsemen led by Proximus Caesar (a hissable Kevin Durand), a bonobo psycho who pretends to follow the "ape not kill ape" teachings of the late Caesar. Instead he attacks the Eagle Clan and sets Noa on the run, with Mae following.

Review: 'A Haunting in Venice' is Kenneth Branagh's most wickedly entertaining take yet on Poirot

Working from a script by Josh Friedman, director Wes Ball (of the dubious "Maze Runner" films) pulls out all the action stops as the apes go ape with a vengeance. The kingdom of the title belongs to Proximus, who's willing to enslave or murder his kin to suit his rabid ambition as he fights to open a rusty vault said to contain the secrets of human history. Hint: It's tech.

A scary silverback soldier named Sylva (Eka Darville) pushes Proximus toward all-out war. But the leader's human adviser, Trevathan (a wickedly wily William H. Macy) persuades Proximus that the vault is worth any bloodshed needed to seize it.

In the final third, the movie loses points from thudding repetition and by practically begging for a sequel without providing evidence that there's a crying need for one. Don't get me wrong. There's still life and art in the ape-verse, but a worrying case of franchise fatigue is sneaking in. Whatever happened to quitting while you're ahead?

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The Movie With the Most Reviews To Get 100% on Rotten Tomatoes

This movie may have been slept on while it was in theaters, but its 100% approval rating should earn it notice.

The Big Picture

• Rotten Tomatoes scores can oversimplify film criticism; there's more to a good review than "rotten" or "fresh."
• Rotten Tomatoes does bring attention to overlooked films like Leave No Trace .
• Leave No Trace explores the challenges of assimilation and the freedom of choice in a moving and authentic way.

While film criticism aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes are useful in helping to determine the broad critical consensus that a film received, simplifying the response to a film into a score is not necessarily a useful form of engaging with art. Rotten Tomatoes works like a binary , and in actuality, there’s much more to a good review than whether a film is simply “rotten” or “fresh.” Metrics like Rotten Tomatoes may claim to “democratize” the art of criticism, but they’re largely useless for those looking for more nuanced opinions. However, overwhelming critical support from an aggregator like Rotten Tomatoes can shed a spotlight on films that would not have otherwise received as much attention from a mainstream audience. Debra Granik ’s 2018 family drama Leave No Trace may have been a film that many slept on while it was in theaters, but its 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes should hopefully encourage a wider audience to check it out .

Leave No Trace

*Availability in US

A father and his seventeen-year-old daughter are living an ideal existence in a vast urban park in Portland, Oregon when a small mistake derails their lives forever.

What Happens in 'Leave No Trace'?

Leave No Trace is Granik’s follow up to her breakthrough 2010 drama Winter’s Bone starring Jennifer Lawrence . Winter’s Bone was a grounded thriller that depicted both familial relationships and its natural environments with great detail. While Winter’s Bone could loosely be described as a “genre film,” Leave No Trace was squarely focused on depicting an authentic, lived-in experience. The film follows Will ( Ben Foster ), a former military veteran who lives “off the grid” with his teenage daughter, Tom ( Thomasin McKenzie ). Although Will and Tom have gotten used to this nomadic lifestyle , they are forced to “assimilate” when they are discovered.

Granik does a great job at exploring her characters’ lifestyle without judgment. Living outside civil society presents its dangers. There is a lack of medical supplies and a distance from breaking news, but Tom is also removed from any social circles with children her own age . She has lived to be entirely dependent upon her father, and has never learned what constitutes normal human interaction. At the same time, Will is able to use their nomadic lifestyle in order to focus on his priorities. He knows that the infrastructure of normal society is rife with issues, and that they may cause issues in Tom’s development. This objective view of nomad living is rare to see in film, as even Nomadland offered some judgments on its characters.

Will knows firsthand that the infrastructure can fail because of his own backstory. Although Granik never gives Foster an expositional monologue where he explains his entire life, it’s subtly hinted that he’s dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences in combat. Although Will is dealing with his trauma in the way that he sees fit, not associating with anyone else isn’t necessarily a healthy way to cope with his struggles. Granik explores the flawed, yet understandable logic in his thinking. Will mistakes “needing help” for moral weakness, and feels that receiving assistance from therapists is a mistake. Will’s unwillingness to ask for help isn’t because of toxic masculinity; he wants his daughter to perceive him as authoritative so that he can offer her a blanket of safety.

'Leave No Trace’ Tries To Show, Not Tell

Granik does a great job at showing how challenging the assimilation process can be. Will and Tom are discovered by a jogger, and must adjust to a new life in rural Oregon. Will and Tom subvert the expectations that the social services officers have about “nomads.” Tom possesses an academic knowledge that rivals anyone her own age that attended school, and Will has taken care of himself remarkably well. Granik chooses not to demonize either Will or the social service officers that try to get him to adjust his lifestyle. Both parties are simply trying to find a solution to this situation that is healthy and legal for everyone involved. Foster shows how reluctant Will is to change a lifestyle that he felt was working for both him and his daughter, giving one of his best performances in the process.

While it never feels like they are in physical danger, Will has not accepted that he will have to introduce Tom to the rest of the world. Granik crafts a beautiful father-daughter story because the film is just as much about Will’s development as it is about Tom coming of age . Tom begins to find joy when she gets to meet other people and hear about their experiences; she has only ever been close with her father, so learning about someone else is a breath of fresh air. The film doesn’t suggest that Will’s teachings had a negative impact on her, but it does show the value in having a diversity of experience.

Rotten Tomatoes' Score Display on Google Has Changed — What Does This Mean? [Updated]

The grounded realism of ‘leave no trace’ helps it feel authentic.

However, the assimilation process is much different for Will because he has seen what living a non-nomadic life could look like. Tom has never known anything other than what her father told her, so her perception is more limited. Will specifically chose to live his life nomadically because of his inability to engage with other people. In its most heartbreaking sequence , Leave No Trace shows why the two characters have to split up. Will has chosen to remain isolated, but Tom still has the opportunity to make that decision. Will realizes that in order to give her the freedom to make that choice, he will have to leave her behind. Leave No Trace doesn’t turn this moment into a manipulative one that exists purely to pull the audience’s heartstrings. It was evident from the beginning of the story that, inevitably, Tom would have to move on.

While Leave No Trace landed with little impact upon its debut, it’s the type of film that is worthy of a critical rediscovery. Granik’s unflashy style may not have seemed exciting to casual viewers, but the realism with which she crafts the story makes the characters’ experiences feel more authentic . The story is a timeless one, and the film is able to analyze a specific experience with empathy. Although it may be best known as McKenzie’s breakout film , Leave No Trace ’s 100% approval rating couldn’t be more deserving.

Leave No Trace is available to stream on Starz in the U.S.

Watch on Starz

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes free Stream Online: It's Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and this Today Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Movies. The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Movie will air on 20th Century Studios Live today at 1 p.m. ET. Ready to tune into the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Showdown? Here’s how to watch the Movie this afternoon, plus our recommendations for the best ways to watch every Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Movie this year, from now until 20th Century Studios.

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I ran my first marathon wearing an Apple Watch SE and AirPods – here’s how it went

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

I finally did it: I ran my first marathon , and it went much better than I expected. However, in the final quarter of the race, it was also more painful than I would have wanted, and I only have myself to blame for that. I skipped strength training sessions while training over the winter, and I paid the price.

The bad news is that there is a pretty big problem with using these gadgets for a marathon, and it involves battery life. The AirPods will probably die while you’re running, and the Apple Watch SE might not last too long after you’re done with your race.

My running setup

I’ve long said you don’t need Apple’s most expensive gadgets to get a great experience. And I mean it. I’ve been training using this exact setup for months. It’s how I ran my half-marathons in preparation for my first race running a full marathon.

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The AirPods are also your basic AirPods model at this point. I don’t need AirPods Pro 2 when I train. Active noise cancelation is great, of course. But I want to pay attention to my surroundings. For music or podcasts, the AirPods are great when running, even if you don’t get support for spatial audio. Put differently, I can confirm that AirPods are a better option than the AirPods Pro for this particular scenario.

I’ll point out that most marathon races will take up to 6 hours to finish the race.

The AirPods were first to go

The second downside, which I hadn’t considered until running the race, was the age of these devices. Battery health is an aspect you should keep in mind if you want to run marathons and ensure your gadgets do not run out of juice.

Around the 21-mile mark (34 km), the right earpod gave out. It played the sad chime that Apple users know all too well, warning me that battery life was depleted. So now, I was listening to Taylor Swift’s 1989 on my left bud only. I was annoyed at this point that the music was going to run out before I’d finish the race.

I stopped the music playback right there and put the AirPods back in their Lightning case. After a few minutes of charging, they would be good for a few more hours of music, but I was dealing with pain and decided to run the rest of the race without any music.

Would I do it again?

Unlike the AirPods, the Apple Watch did not run out of juice. It recorded all the data I wanted to have saved. Not only that, it lasted more than 6 hours required to finish the marathon. However, it would have died if it had taken much longer to run the race.

I will have to pay attention to the age of the wearables I’m using when running long races. I might have to replace the Apple Watch battery since it has lost so much capacity. For the AirPods, I’d have to get a different pair. Also, I will have to ensure that I run pain-free in future races. This will prevent me from slowing down and extending my run. That way, neither gadget will run out of battery life.

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.

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