Air

I can’t really tell: does being old enough to remember the period of this particular period piece make it a better viewing experience or not? Sure, you get a kick out of the music and the artifacts, as well as knowing the details of how it all turned out—but in some ways that’s the problem, too. Try as the principal actors might to inject some suspense here, there’s no way you don’t know the ending to the story (which is really a beginning, after all), and that fact drains out a large amount of the drama. Still, the movie deserves credit for its precise recreation of the past, and Matt Damon performs yeoman's work in making the stakes for his character Sonny seem pretty close to life and death, for the company at least if not any of the people involved. Most intriguing may be scriptwriter Alex Convery’s decision to make one character present but mostly not a presence in the tale; that makes the story more about those other folks than the one person in the tale everybody already knows all about. The one big misstep comes at the crucial moment, when the pitch is made by recounting everything that hasn’t happened yet but will, as if the future itself is intruding upon the depicted past; it makes for a scene that is just not believable, and contrary to the rest of this story's telling. Still, the overall impression is of a well-played game. I wouldn’t say that this film soars to unprecedented heights, a la a certain basketball legend, but I think it does score enough points to come away with a win.