Air: The Big Jump stars dreamy Nike sneaker salesman Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) and his more calculating boss Phil Knight (Ben Affleck). 1984 was not an easy year for business in this case, as Orwell predicted. Three sneaker giants are vying for new NBA stars to become brand ambassadors. Basketball players signed with Converse spend the most playing time on the court, Adidas is second on the list, and in the absence of major star deals, Nike risks losing remnants of its influence, closing the top three.
While Vaccaro’s colleagues try to replicate the plan designed to recruit three basketball players relatively cheap for $250,000, Sonny dreams of turning the game around. Damon’s hero proposes a risky move: to spend the same amount on one person, Michael Jordan, whose star is shining in the NBA sky. By the laws of the genre, Vaccaro will have to defend his idea in front of both a younger boss (Jason Bateman, who plays marketing director Rob Strasser) and chief Knight, but Jordan himself will be the worst rival, who flatly refuses to cooperate with Nike.
Air: The Big Jump is the brainchild of socialite newcomer Alex Convery and two inseparable friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It wasn’t easy for the project to reach the star duo – in 2021 Convery’s text caught Affleck and Damon’s attention thanks to a list of unrealized best-case scenarios, after which they finalized the material and began implementing it. By the way, the film became the first production project for the actors themselves. the film company created by them, Artists Equitywith this they plan to break into Hollywood’s biggest majors.
Perhaps one day the personal story of the star duet will also form the basis of a biography, but so far they are passionate about other people’s success stories – not stars by any means. Talking about the conclusion of a landmark deal between Nike and future basketball legend Michael Jordan, the film’s writers deliberately leave the latter out of brackets – the athlete himself is only piecemeal onscreen, fragments of the chronicle, and his onscreen avatar (Damian Young) is never shot in close-up.
But the camera carefully looks and admires the faces of those who are used to being behind the scenes of such stories. Although Sonny Vaccaro, Phil Knight and Rob Strasser made their mark in history, they remained understudied figures for millions of basketball fans. At the same time, tape history is treated the way NBA fans treat Jordan’s legacy with caution and great love.
In key deals with shoe giants, the interests of the basketball player are represented by his parents, whose roles are played by Viola Davis and Julius Tennon. Jordan dedicated his main victories to his mother and it was up to him to confess his love, reaching each new height in his career. Still: Deloris Jordan not only raised an outstanding athlete, but also helped make her rich. He was the one who made a radical demand by agreeing to a deal with Nike: We need your $250,000, a luxury red Mercedes, and a percentage from the sale of the entire Air Jordan line of sneakers.
Never before in the history of world sports have athletes been so enthusiastic. Never before in the history of world sports had agreed to satisfy them. But it is important that Jordan’s mother’s request was an attempt to restore justice, not the result of personal greed. The woman knew better than any of the best basketball scouts in the world how her son was going to grow and wanted to share the big cake for the benefit of her family (to recap: MJ received more than $250 million from MJ in the past year alone. Nike and the Jordan Brand itself 5.1 billion dollars).
To promote the picture, the authors also spared no effort or money. Ben Affleck didn’t take off his Nike sneakers during the promotional campaign, and those who bought the Amazon Prime Video project were generous with more than $7 million to show the trailer during the Super Bowl.
And it is clear that the increased rates fully justify themselves. “Air: Big Jump” is an excellent example of a sports series that does not talk much about sports, but reflects its main components: hard work, talent and excellent physical shape.
Like a good athlete, the film manages to accurately calculate its strength and meet the ideal timing, without showing the slightest sign of fatigue throughout the entire distance. This is a skillfully written, acted and filmed film in which the seriousness of the tone is diluted with ideally appropriate humor; the actors skillfully and without emotional excesses play their real prototypes; and from the soundtrack to the painting that mimics the graininess of the film look of the movies of that era, every frame is literally saturated with the 80s.
Affleck’s new directorial effort is already predicting an Oscar, with his return to the majors and the failure of his previous film, “The Law of the Night,” to prove a complete misunderstanding. Like “Top Gun: Maverick,” which made $1.5 billion last year, and so on saved the world, “Air: The Big Jump” comes to your rescue, not at the box office, but in the perfectly balanced auteur cinema that we crave. As a rule, he does not break any financial records, but like Michael Jordan, he definitely changes the rules of the game.