Cinema has always been able to tell great stories, some of pure fantasy and creative flair, and other true ones, which, even if fictionalized, have been able to excite us as few other things can do: this is the case of Air – The Story of the Great Leap a film by and with Ben Affleck which talks about the story linked to the most famous basketball shoes of all time, the Air Jordans. To guide us in this daring story, full of suspense despite the final results being known (the Air Jordans are still a reality today), there is an exceptional Matt Damon who in the role of Sonny tells us about a visionary man capable of achieving the impossible.
1984: A Different World
We are in 1984, only 39 years before our times, yet from the visual reconstructions with which our story begins, the setting looks like an alien worlddeeply different from today’s. A world made up of videotapes, corded phones, no cell phones, and with the internet being a fantasy with no solid foundation (hardly anyone knows what it is). In the scenario where Eddie Murphy plays in Hollywood, different brands of shoes vie for domination of a new sporting era, that of basketball.
Converse it has always been the queen of parquet, the brand that has somehow “founded” the foundations of the game, worn by champions and not; there is then Adidas, the German brand of sports shoes, on the crest of the wave at a time when all the guys want a pair, in addition to their tracksuits and their wrist guards. Finally there is Nikea brand that – strange to say today – at the time only owned the 17% market share in the world of basketball.
Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is the scout for the basketball division marketing team for Nike, a man who after passing forty finds himself coming to terms with himself, with a job he loves but hasn’t yet given him what he’s looking for. This is not strictly an economic pursuit, as he works for a nearly billion dollar company (in 1984) and career-wise he is more than accomplished.
The problem arises when the marketing team has to decide which athletes to focus on for the coming season: after several names, coming from the reasoning of the colleague Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) at the head of the division, Sonny comes up with a revolutionary idea, namely that of focus all $250,000 of the budget on a single player, rising star Michael Jordan, a very promising eighteen year old. With these premises, we get to tell a vibrant story, undoubtedly interesting, with this interest is kept alive above all by the extraordinary acting ability of the protagonists, capable of making us fully experience their own emotions.
Becoming winners
Moments punctuated by the “Nike rules” rage throughout the film: a sort of self-celebratory manifesto where the company has inserted ideas, specific phrases that sound like “Your work doesn’t end until you finish your work” or similar. These phrases can be seen as a sort of conceptual map that Sonny actually reads, but which he follows to the letter for the research of this player and his dream of realisation.
Ben Affleck he paints profound characters, first of all his own David Falkfounder and CEO from the Nikedrawing a man somewhere between the dream of a kid who just wants to live his life, and the adult who has to deal with boards of directors, stock market prices and different sports divisions in addition to those related to basketball. Matt Damon holds up the whole film with his charm and his self-conviction, a bit ‘as has already happened in Le Mans ’66 – The great challengealthough here instead of Christian Bale there is a Jason Bateman which embellishes his character with a story about his private life (which we won’t tell you, but which we anticipate could be the most touching point of the film).
Be Jordan
Air – the Story of the Great Leap is a historical film, one of those that probably it will not go down in history to be the best film of the year or of the century, but that somehow the generations will see and understand. The two hours that flow before the eyes of the spectator are truly like a river in full flood, which begins with a small current and then flows into a cascade of simple but profound emotions. The film is not about shoes in the strict sense, talks about family and the values it hands down, talks about friendship and risks, even those we take for ourselves not realizing how much they can affect others, and sometimes how our selfishness overwhelms others by blurring our vision and preventing us from understanding the implications of such risks. All condensed into a team because, without a team, one man can’t make a difference however good he is.
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