Ben Affleck's return to directing happens with 'Air', a movie about how Nike convinced Michael Jordan to sign with them all the way back in 1984. It stars a top-tier cast with Matt Damon, Chris Tucker, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, and Ben Affleck. It shows the trials and tribulations that Nike and Sonny Vaccaro (played by Damon) go through to sign their first big basketball star. It's a movie about drive, determination, and following something you feel so strongly about. Watching this movie, made me want to start this website and follow something that I felt strongly about.
Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro is a great performance, 'Air' is maybe one of the best performances of his career. He plays the role of a desperate basketball scout trying to find the guy that will propel Nike's basketball division into the next stratosphere. While other Nike execs wanted to sign multiple players from the 1984 draft class, like Charles Barkley, Mel Turpin, and John Stockton. All players were good coming out of college but weren't enough to propel Nike's basketball division to where it would become one of the biggest global brands of our time. The scene where he realizes what Nike needs to do to become one of the giants in the industry is one of my favorite scenes. Sonny knew Michael Jordan was the one for Nike, and he knew he needed to make it happen, no matter the consequences.
Even though Damon is the star of the movie, the supporting characters hold their own as well with Viola Davis (Deloris Jordan), Chris Tucker (Howard White), Jason Bateman (Rob Strasser), and Ben Affleck (Phil Knight) also keeping us intrigued in this movie. Even though you already know what happens, it keeps you on the edge of your seat and waiting to see what happens next. Seeing Sonny trying so hard to make this happen and get the guy he wants is admirable, almost to a fault. He breaks the rules of how things are supposed to be ran and he could've lost everything he had in his career and would have taken down the entire basketball division at Nike. It was a risk Sonny was willing to take and the others, with some hesitation, went along for the ride. That's the lesson I walked away with, some things are worth taking the risk for, especially if you believe in it.
All in all, this movie leaves you in suspense and has you wanting to see what happens next, even though we know the ending of this story (Jordan signs with Nike, and makes the greatest shoe of all time, the Air Jordan 1). The reason why I say this is a movie everyone should see is that it tells you that no dream is too big to chase, no matter how many detractors you have, or whatever they are saying. This movie is inspiring, suspenseful and lets you know to dream big, no matter what. Like I say on this website, every dream is crazy until it isn't.
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