Review of Air (2023) by Mauro_Lanari — 13 May 2023

(Mauro Lanari).

Affleck and Damon already won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in '98, when Ben was 25 and Matt 27. Today, twice as old, they wanted to aim for a more adult story. They don't care about sports drama at all but neither about Nike's commercial success, rather the way it was achieved. The titles of some songs included in the soundtrack would be enough to understand it: "Money for Nothing" (Dire Straits '85), "Born in the U.S.A." with its lyrics explained during the film, and "Love on a Real Train" not because a fantastic composition by Tangerine Dream but because, as written on the end credits), it is the version taken from the OST of "Risky Business" (Paul Brickman '83). "Air" celebrates an almost incomprehensible contrast for those in the Old Continent who have had the opportunity to experience the welfare guaranteed by social democracy: that between the Reagan's neoliberalism and Obama's one (in Great Britain: between Thatcher's economic policy and Blair's one). By acting in accordance with the 2nd typology, they would have saved the world from none other than the Orwellian "1984" (shown in the opening sequence when Ridley Scott used it for the Macintosh ads launch. The two friends have also become narratively heavier: abolished any action scene, the entire movie tries to stand on words by imitating a rather soporific Sorkin-style writing.