I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. I’m not sure why, because I loved Good Will Hunting, and the other stuff they’ve done. This brings Ben Affleck and Matt Damon together again. I love basketball, and played it in high school. I am just so burned out on Michael Jordan talk all the time. One of the greats of all time died last week (Willis Reed), and that wasn’t covered on the news, but everyday, I hear sports radio talk about why Jordan was the best basketball player of all time. (The movie even ends stating that he was the best of all time, yet I’d rank him third behind Lebron James and Wilt Chamberlain, but I digress).
When the movie started off playing a Dire Straits song I hate (Money for Nothing) and showing a montage of ‘80s things, I thought it was a bad start. It was nice hearing one of the best punk bands ever right after that (The Violent Femmes, who are the only group that has two songs in the movie). Yet the last few years I’ve been ranting about movie needle drops. Ever since Tarantino blew everyone away picking the best songs for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, other filmmakers do this with classic rock songs. Affleck does this with songs of the era with mixed results. Hearing Run DMC’s My Adidas was perfect, for obvious reasons. The best rap song ever, The Message by Grandmaster Flash, we only got the music from. And who doesn’t want to hear some George Clinton? Now, as much as I love Tempted by Squeeze, it’s just getting a bit overplayed, as is Time After Time, which was used better in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Speaking of other movies using the songs better, even when they played REO Speedwagon’s I Can’t Fight This Feeling…I couldn’t fight the feeling of thinking how much better that was used in the criminally underseen The Way Way Back. Or that Sister Christian was used better in Boogie Nights. And that Rock the Casbah is one of the few Clash songs that shouldn’t be used in movies. And the on-the-nose song choices were a bit goofy; hearing In aBig Country when a character is driving in a new state to talk to Michael Jordan’s parents. And I’m sure nobody will catch this, but twice they played music from Tangerine Dream, and it was a song right out of Risky Business. I only saw that movie twice, in the early 80s, and I caught that. It also didn’t fit the scene they played it in.
I shouldn’t even be devoting this much time in a movie review to the songs, but if filmmakers want to just play songs to excite the audience, they can be knocked in reviews about the film; or we should at least devote some time in our reviews to talking about the tunes. Now, onto the picture.
I was surprised to find out Nike was in such a desperate situation before signing Jordan to a shoe deal. As a kid, I had posters on my wall (including the “Board Room” poster they showed in the film) – and it had Hall of Fame players like Reggie Theus, Maurice Cheeks, Dennis Johnson, Sidney Moncrief (who is mentioned once in the movie), Bernard King, Elvin Hayes, Moses Malone (who’s mentioned a few times), Artis Gilmore (who is dissed), and Robert Parish – all wearing Nikes. As a kid, that seemed like an impressive roster to me. But with Converse having Bird and Magic, and the soccer shoe brand Adidas having Kareem and a few other big stars, and their tracksuits becoming part of hip-hop culture (and embraced by Run-DMC) – Nike was about ready to fold the basketball division of their company.
It was great watching a bunch of people in a room, being lightly scolded by their boss (the always great Jason Bateman), about which of the recently drafted NBA players they should go after (and it’s nice to see former Aztec Michael Cage on their chalkboard, shown a handful of times). Sonny Vacarro (Matt Damon) makes fun of all the choices other people want them to try and sign. I was annoyed by one joke that obviously wasn’t said at the time but put in for the audience. When a person brings up signing Charles Barkley, someone scoffs and lists his negatives, ending with “Nobody is going to want to hear him on TV.”
A few other movies have done this type of joke and it’s annoying. The one that comes to mind is in Bohemian Rhapsody when Mike Myers, playing a record executive, says nobody will be rocking out in their cars to the song (when in fact, he did that in Wayne’s World).
Oh, another thing this film did that another movie did recently that I hated – not showing Jordan! We see his profile, from the back or from a distance, and not many words from him. In the movie She Said, it kind of worked because we do see Harvey Weinstein come into an office with lawyers, and we hear a voice that sounds exactly like him, yelling on a speaker phone. But near the end of the movie, when they’re all in a room together trying to get a deal done – it’s just odd to keep showing the parents, and not Michael Jordan.
Just as it was fun in Moneyball watching how a big company is trying to make things work with a limited budget, it was crazy to see that Nike had only budgeted $250,000 a year, that they were going to spread out to four different NBA players for shoe contracts. And none of the prospects excite Vaccaro. After watching a video of Jordan, who as a rookie at North Carolina, makes a game winning shot so calmly, he has an epiphany. He thinks Jordan will be a huge NBA star and they have to sign him (he was the second player drafted, behind Sam Bowie [remember him?], so it’s not like he was the only one that thought he’d be good). But he has to convince his bosses, including Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck), that all the budget should go to this one player instead of three or four.
What always amazes me in a movie like this is how we already know the outcome, yet we’re still on the edge of our seats. We know Knight is going to agree to whatever it takes to sign Jordan and we know they’ll design their own shoe specifically for him. Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that will surprise you. I enjoyed seeing Vacarro break protocol to go to Jordan’s house to speak with his mom (the always terrific Viola Davis). Another thing I didn’t realize was that Jordan would be fined for wearing his new Nike shoes in games.
Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina) was the tough antagonist, but I liked that while he seemed like an a-hole, it felt realistic. The same way we felt about Jay Mohr as the agent in Jerry Maguire (side note: Mohr was in this, but only one scene, which is a shame; he’s immensely talented, but I digress).
Affleck was smart to make the characters all feel realistic. Marketing director Rob Strasser (Bateman) has a bit of humanity and empathy, instead of just making veiled threats about Sonny being out of a job if he doesn’t land Jordan, or if he does and Jordan doesn’t pan out as a player in the NBA. Knight is tough with Sonny, because Sonny is making decisions without always asking him. He has his eccentricities, and sometimes his affirmations like Ted Lasso, worked well. Perhaps the only character that was a bit over-the-top, was Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), the person who made the shoes. His character should have been toned down a bit. And speaking of toning things down a bit, it was great casting to get Chris Tucker (as Howard White) as one of the marketing guys for Nike who talks a lot, and tells stories, but is reigned in a bit from what you’d expect from Tucker. He steals all the scenes he’s in.
I did feel the movie should have shown us a bit more basketball (but as a former player, I’m biased). I felt the same with the last Batman movie. I felt it needed more Bruce Wayne, and more fighting crime. I like to see scenes of what the protagonist does.
Near the end of the movie when Jordan’s dad, upon seeing White, says “you’re the only brother in the building” it made me think of something. The movie isn’t going to cover other aspects of Nike’s history – slave labor in China, or making shoes so expensive that kids in urban communities can't afford them, steal them from stores, or shoot other kids for the expensive kicks.
I remember playing basketball at Mira Mesa High when the first Jordan’s came out. I couldn’t believe a shoe was being sold for $100 a pair (my parents refused to buy me $20 leather basketball shoes). It was 1985, and one player on the team whose family had some money (Scott Cummings, who is teaching law at UCLA now) had a pair. Everyone was in awe. I thought the red and black was rather gaudy, but they were certainly a few steps up from the crappy canvas Chuck Taylors that used to be the basketball shoe back in the day.
This movie gets 3 ½ stars out of 5, and you’ll enjoy it even if you’re not a basketball fan (although I’m such a psycho hoops fan that, when they’d show Vacarro’s office, with the name plate “Tape Archives” on the wall, I thought it said “Tiny Archibald” the first time I saw it).