Review: 'Air' is a movie classic in the making that you don't want to miss

Big news: Ben Affleck directs the first all-star Oscar contender of 2023. And that's something for a financially angled tale about creating a sneaker. Not just any sneaker, it's the Air Jordan, named after then-hoops rookie Michael Jordan, that sparked a culture revolution in 1984.

Now in theaters in advance of its streaming debut on Prime, "Air" stars Affleck as Nike CEO Phil Knight, a profit-obsessed Buddhist (even he laughs at the contradiction) faced with pressure from the publicly traded Nike company when Adidas and Converse leave it in the dust.

Enter a livewire Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, a sweaty schlub in charge of Nike's flailing basketball division. Sonny wants to blow his entire marketing budget on signing Jordan. In hindsight, it's a eureka moment. Back then, Sonny was laughed at by Nike honchos Howard White (Chris Tucker), Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans).

It's a kick watching Affleck and Damon, Oscar-winning besties for writing "Good Will Hunting," go at each other on screen. Though they've appeared together in nine movies, "Air" marks the first time that Affleck has directed his boyhood chum from Massachusetts. And it speaks volumes about their relationship that Damon gives one of his best ever performances.

In fact, all the actors are dynamite in roles large and small, a sign of a gifted director. Affleck won a best picture Oscar for 2012's "Argo," though the Academy snubbed him for directing. That can't happen again. As Phil and Sonny fight it out over Jordan, they build a team in which every player is essential, just like in basketball, just like in movies.

Getting Phil's OK is nothing compared to watching Sonny take on Jordan's agent, David Falk (Chris Messina making hostility a hoot), and then drive from Nike's Oklahoma offices to North Carolina to meet Jordan's parents unannounced and clearly unwelcome.

Deloris Jordan, Michael's mother, bristles at even the hint of compromising her son's talent and integrity for a shoe deal. Jordan himself insisted that only one actress could play his mom -- EGOT winner Viola Davis. Smart choice since the triumphant Davis is a primal force who powers the role of Deloris by nailing every nuance with maternal fire and feeling.

"Oh man, here we go," laughs James Jordan (a warm and wonderful Julius Tennon, Davis's off-screen husband) when his wife negotiates beyond a flat fee for a piece of the Air Jordan profits in perpetuity, a decision that would change celebrity product endorsements for keeps.

It's a good thing that Davis embodies the mother-son bond since we see nothing of Jordan himself in the movie, except in archival footage. And don't look for on-court fireworks. The dynamics here are focused on what made the shoe a phenom, including Peter Moore (a terrific Matthew Maher), who created the famous Air Jordan 1 silhouette.

Kudos are due to screenwriter Alex Convery, a relative kid at age 30, who was about the same age as Affleck and Damon were on "Good Will Hunting" when he started a spec script for "Air" that became his first produced screenplay. Except for a quick mention of sweatshop exploitation, the screenplay goes easy on Nike. But Convery comes up aces by packing laugh-out-loud fun and nailbiting suspense into every frame.

"Air" deserves comparison to 2011's classic "Moneyball," which dialed down on actual baseball in favor of the deal-making that fed the roar of the crowd. "Air" is a basketball movie like "The Social Network" is a Facebook movie, meaning it isn't. Both are about gamesmanship and the compromises reached in the name of winning.

So what ranks "Air" as something more than a sports-adjacent origin story about mostly white guys trying to monetize the success of a young Black athlete -- Jordan was just 21 at the time -- who became the GOAT? It's all in the teamwork, not just among the Nike crew, but among the filmmakers who chose to bring that crew's story to the screen.

Sentimental? Maybe. But tough when it needs to be. Deloris taught her son to know his own worth, and that lesson lands behind and in front of the camera in "Air." It's significant that Affleck and Damon recently started Artists Equity, a production company that operates on a profit-sharing model to create better deals for all contributors.

Affleck knows that you can't buy the kind of greatness that Jordan represents, but you can be deeply inspired by it. He knows stepping into Air Jordans, as millions have done, is more than just a business hustle. As Sonny says, the Air Jordan is going to make us all "want to fly."

And fly this movie does over the traps of deal-making and into the challenge of staying human. This is what makes the outrageously entertaining "Air" a movie classic in the making. This you don't want to miss.