By Melanie Mayberry, programming editor
Basketball fans, set your calendars. Air, the Ben Affleck directed film about the early relationship between Nike and NBA legend Michael Jordan, comes to Amazon’s Prime Video this Friday (May 12.) The movie, which will be free to Prime members, stars Affleck as Nike co-founder Phil Knight and longtime Ben bud, Matt Damon, as Nike exec Sonny Vaccaro. Air was first released in theaters on April 5 and will be an Amazon streaming exclusive on Friday.
But is the movie any good? Rottentomatoes.com gives Air a score of 92 out of a possible 100, based on 292 reviews. (Michael Jordan would like that score.) Below are samples from the reviews, and a movie trailer.
“In Ben Affleck’s masterful, scenery-chewing contribution to sports cinema, Air, Chris Messina reinvents the concept of scenery chewing.” — The Ringer.
“It takes a lot of restraint and skill to mine high drama out of standing in line at the airport or out of a meeting…Air succeeds because Affleck trusts his story, trusts his cast, and trusts himself to know that these moments are their own action movie.” — Pittsburgh City Paper.
“That’s what makes Air work, besides its delightful mid-’80s references and costuming: the fact that it functions as an origin story for one of the world’s few self-made Black billionaires. It’s a movie about a shoe but also so much more.” — Vogue.
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“Air is effortlessly entertaining, but it wants to be about more than just the marketing triumph of an underdog shoe company.” — NPR.
“A triumphant return to form for Ben Affleck as a director. Pure entertainment from beginning to end.” — JoBlo’s Movie Network.
“Air mainly takes place in drab offices, yet the cast’s expert performances transform those spaces much in the same way that Michael Jordan transformed courts and sneaker racks — by turning them into sites of magic.” — The Atlantic.
“Air at least seems to understand exactly what it is: an amusing time capsule, steeped in the irony that we all know just how pivotally successful this venture eventually becomes.” — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
To read more Air reviews at Rotten Tomatoes.com, click here.
