FILM PICK OF THE WEEK
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s sports drama about how Nike signed up-and-coming basketball star Michael Jordan, and created the iconic Air Jordan shoe, is undeniably enjoyable, if rather insubstantial.
It is the mid-1980s and Nike is struggling a little in the market and way behind other sports shoe industry brands, such as Adidas and Converse, in the lucrative field of basketball. Damon plays Nike executive and talent scout Sonny Vaccaro who spends much of his time on the road watching college basketball matches and assessing which players are going to be taken up by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and make it big. Jordan was a rising star at the time (he went on to become one of the greatest, and richest, American sportsmen of all time) and Vaccaro can see that signing him would certainly help Nike’s fortunes.
The trouble is that the 18-year-old Jordan is more impressed by the other brands – and besides, Nike doesn’t have the kind of money that Adidas and Converse are putting on the table.
Vaccaro needs to persuade Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck, who also directs) to put all the money they have available to sign basketball players into the one pitch to Jordan, rather than spreading it over two or three players.
He’s not best pleased with that idea but eventually agrees. Meanwhile Nike marketing director Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and Nike’s NBA liaison Howard White (Chris Tucker) understand the value of Vaccaro’s suggestion and try to support him in his bid.
The really radical thing that Vaccaro, a betting man, does is to bypass Jordan’s bullish agent David Falk (Chris Messina) and go direct to Jordan’s family, specifically his formidable mother Deloris (a stand-out performance from Viola Davis).
He travels down to the family home in North Carolina where he has a meeting with Deloris that, while incurring the wrath of Falk, actually does much to seal the deal.
That short scene between Damon and Davis, which takes place at a garden table, is by far the most compelling in the whole film. Deloris knows the worth of her talented offspring and is going to fight his corner.
While this is less about sporting prowess and more about clever marketing and rampant consumerism, it is very engaging viewing all the same.