I care not a wit for basketball, Michael Jordan, Nike, or sneaker sales so it was up to everyone in front of the camera and behind the scenes to make me care about these topics… and they succeeded.

Air is, indeed, about how Nike (a third place sneaker brand back in 1984) went after Michael Jordan to represent their brand. Jordan had no interest in Nike so it was a hard sell for the ad-men and executives (as played by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Tucker, and Jason Bateman).

Since we know that, yup, Michael Jordan wound up being the greatest player in the game and, yup, he signed with Nike and made them huge… it’s up to the movie to somehow make us invested in the known. And the film does a pretty good job for the first two acts at doing just that. It’s not amazing, but it’s solid… and yet I sat in my theater wondering why Ford v. Ferrari is so much better a flick when I care about as much about auto racing as I do basketball.

But the third act brings it home with two or three amazing speeches. The key one gives Matt Damon – as the Nike executive – a moving speech about immortality and how we build up and break down our heroes. It moved me as someone who would have a hard time caring less about shoe sales. Then Viola Davis (as Michael Jordan’s mom) lays down the law and she’s amazing too.

This is simply a very good movie about shoe salesmen. The more you are a sneakerhead, the more you love Jordan, the more you love the NBA, or the more you love classic 80s music and the appearance of Mattel Electronics Football and the Rubik’s Cube, the more you’ll like this flick. It’s a solid example of smart people doing their job well and it convinced me to care. Like the shoe executives in the movie, it did it’s job well.

Score: 86