Air is an interesting movie on several levels, a couple of them only tangentially related to the film itself.
The film itself is perfectly fine, perhaps even very fun. Air is oddly framed in the way all such pictures are—think of the recent Tetris or, more traditionally, musical biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Walk the Line: as an underdog story in which we already know that the underdog is going to be triumphant because it’s a real story about a real smash success. And yet, the picture still manages to wring a little suspense out of the story of Michael Jordan’s decision to sign with Nike over better-selling competitors Converse and Adidas simply by making the characters so compelling.
Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is a shoe hustler making the rounds on the high school circuit, getting...