Air

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The Movie in 3 Sentences

Air follows Nike’s struggling basketball division in the 1980s as Sonny Vaccaro pushes the company to bet everything on a young Michael Jordan. Instead of treating Jordan as just another athlete in a sponsorship portfolio, the team decides to build an entire shoe—and eventually an entire brand—around the idea of his future greatness. The movie turns what is essentially a corporate licensing deal into an underdog story about instinct, persuasion, and taking a huge swing before the rest of the world sees what you see.

What makes Air so entertaining is that it manages to create real suspense out of a story whose ending everyone already knows. We know Nike, then a distant third in the basketball shoe market, eventually signs Michael Jordan and creates Air Jordan. The film is mostly about how Sonny Vaccaro, played by Matt Damon, manages to pull it off—but somehow it also makes you momentarily wonder whether he actually will. That’s the mark of good storytelling: taking an inevitable outcome and making the path toward it feel uncertain.