Movie Nation

Writer-director David Helling introduces and adds a filmed postscript to his first feature film, “His Only Son,” something not wholly unheard of in mainstream cinema, but not that unusual in faith-based films.

He talks down the film’s budget and talks up the crowd-sourced wide release efforts of this account of the moment when Abraham became the father of the Chosen People, tested by the “new” god Jehovah who ordered him to make a blood sacrifice of Abraham’s “Only Son,” Isaac.

Whenever I’ve seen this sort of huxtering done with a Hollywood film, it smacks of “let’s change the subject,” as in “Let me talk about this movie’s earnest intent rather than its quality.” For faith-based films, it’s prostheltyizing, urging the faithful to rally to a movie as a cause. In Helling’s case here, there’s a bit of both in play.

Yes, churches and donor “angels” got the movie into thousands of theaters. And alas yes, the actual film is strictly straight-to-video quality — not amateurish, but somewhat cut-rate, and more importantly, flatly scripted and acted, a 100 minute cure for insomnia.

Helling got his movie cast and made, and chose that little-touched corner of desert California that generations of Hollywood Bible films have conditioned us to accept as the Ancient Middle East.

So it looks right, if malnourished, a narrow story requiring little more than a handful of actors (less than two-handfuls), a donkey, a couple of horses and robes and military gear that can easily pass for that of assorted states of pre-Roman Palestine.

But the story is boiled down to tedium, its action beats limited and its finale pre-ordained and thus under even more of a burden to produce something that the preceding 95 minutes have not.

Abraham (Nicholas Mouawad) is a very old man when we meet him, someone with a military background, it is suggested (Helling makes sure to mention his own Iraq service altar call), and someone who hasn’t heard the voice promising him that he would father a great nation and great people in a new land in a very long time.

When he first heard that voice, he was known as Abram, descendent of Noah. And his very complicated (half-sister, possibly already-married) wife Sarah (Sara Seyed) was named Sarai.

But that was ages ago, something something Sarah reminds him of this when he starts talking about that Covenant that Jehovah promised, and going north to the mountains of Moriah to offer a sacrifice, as Jehovah has instructed. Sarah, who had so much trouble conceiving that she supposedly suggested Abraham father a child with their Egyptian handmaiden, can’t be told what or who is to be sacrificed. And she can’t come along.

“Isaac,” their son, “and I will go alone,” Abraham decrees. “Because the Lord commands it.”

Son and very old father set out on the quest, with a couple of traveling companions. They’re on foot, with a donkey loaded with everything they’ll need for a blood sacrifice — save for the lamb usually used in such offerings. It’s a slow journey, allowing much time for flashbacks, to when Abram and Sarai were young, the earlier tests of “This god has led you iright into a famine, into ” a “barren land” where his wife fears she, too is “barren.”

Soldiers are encountered on the way, and a victim of the soldiers’ predations is met. Injuries are suffered, but Abraham — taking his time with good reason — and Isaac eventually make it to their destination, build an altar and you know the rest.

That’s one thing that would hang over this movie, even if it had a big budget and “name” actors who set off sparks on camera. As we know where it’s going, we need things to enliven the journey and spice up the proceedings, and Helling finds that impossible to achieve with this rather bland cast.

Impatience is sure to set in, with this being one of the most famous stories from the Bible and thus well-known throughout the Western world for millenia.

There are modest effects achieved with lighting (Daniel da Silva is The Lord) and ancient cities and battlements are added to the scenery through the haze (Digitally? Optically, with painted glass camera backdrops or miniatures?).

But by the climax, you realize why the filmmaker was cheerleading his finished film at the opening, and promising a”story by story” series of tales from the Old Testament. This is weak tea indeed. Helling’s begging us to grade it on the curve, as it were.

It’s great that Helling was able to spearhead a self-funded/crowd-funded theatrical release, something only Billy Graham was able to do with movies produced under his banner in an earlier era. No doubt “His Only Son” will be make a profit in fairly short order, especially as Helling makes the connection between Abraham’s planned sacrifice and that of Jesus 2000 years later overt, and just in time for Easter.

But the movie is what it is, and what it is isn’t very good, very engrossing, involving, enlightening or entertaining. One should never make a Biblical epic without remembering the Bible’s great hook as literature. The stories in it, passed from generation to generation, have drama and pathos and hope and triumph rising out of despair and hardship.

There’s a reason others have filmed the Abraham/Isaac story, but always left it as merely a chapter in the larger narrative of “The Bible…In the Beginning” or “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” It’s just a vivid but short anecdote, not material for an epic.

Rating: PG-13, violence

Cast: Nicolas Mouawad, Sara Seyed, Edaan Moskowitz and Daniel da Silva

Credits: Scripted and directed by David Helling. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:43

“On the Fringe” might be the most stressful film on Netflix right now.

A great cast makes this Spanish drama of desperation and quiet heartbreak not so much hard to watch as unhealthy to internalize. These are portraits of interconnected lives being pummeled by economic turmoil, an inflationary eviction crisis that hits the young, the old and the newly-arrived almost equally in actor-turned-director and co-writer Juen Diego Botto’s sober, unblinking story.

Botto’s feature-directing debut hides its cards, its interpersonal connections and the very roles — employment, marriage and otherwise — these disperate characters play in this crisis which threatens home and heart, jobs and marriages on a financial and existential level. Hiding those facts just adds to the stress, as we’re wrong-footed, confused and anxious for people we’ve just met on the screen.

Oscar-winner Penélope Cruz is Azucena, tearful and frazzled and defiantly taking her six year-old to school so that she can join a huge protest at a bank.

Luis Tosar (“The Vault”) is Rafa, rattled by a constantly-ringing phone, a wife (Aixa Villagrán) who complains “You should have told me I’d have to deal with this pregnancy alone (in Spanish with English subtitles)” as her “the amneocentesis is this afternoon” goes in one distracted ear and out the other.

Rafa has one early day errand — deliver his teen stepson (Christian Checa) to school for a long-planned excursion. But first, he needs to drop off some cooking gas for someone who needs it. And on that detour, he sees the aftermath of a police knock-and-take-into custody of a little Arab girl (Salma Naim Annassi).

Rafa didn’t see the badgering, barking, barely making an effort to be gentle and nice cop bullying his way into an illegal immigrant’s apartment, how his abrupt early-morning pounding on the door startled Selma and made her cut her hand as she was preparing her lunch for school. Mom left for work earlier.

Rafa’s frantic reaction sets the tone for “On the Fringe (En los márgenes).” He chases the cops on foot. He drags is stepson into the car — which he distractedly always leaves the keys in — and sets off on a reckless street chase.

Rafa is, it turns out, a lawyer with an immigration/social services agency. He knows if this child is shoved into “the system,” her nightmare is just beginning.

Stepson Raúl’s school trip? Out the door, with the kid bribed into spending the day, dismayed and enraged, passively resisting and openly hostile to Rafa and his latest “emergency.”

Rafa keeps introducing “my son.” Raúl keeps correcting him in front of colleagues and strangers. “STEP father.” But Raúl is one character — learning about protest organizing, finally grasping empathy — who has an “arc” here. He will journey from “I wouldn’t ruin my life for ANYone” to understanding Rafa’s “When you see (injustice, someone in crisis), you have no choice. You’re INVOLVED.”

Elderly Teodora (Adelfa Calvo) spends the day leaving forlourn and increasingly despairing messages for day-laborer son Germán (Font García), who gets an earful from his home demo-for-the-day colleague Manuel (Juan Diego Botto, also the film’s director) about not taking his mother’s calls.

This long day will test marriages, other family and professional relationships and virtually every character’s peace of mind, start to finish. Housing insecurity, impotent rage at what banks can do to you at your worst moment, the tightening jaws of an insensate state “system” among lives lived without a net, where one miscalculation, one mistake or one setback simply out of your control can be fatal all contribute to how uneasy and discomfitting this film is.

There’s cold reassurance that this financial/inflationary/housing/workforce “crisis” is worldwide, no matter how much the conservative media portray it in domestic terms in the U.S. What’s distressing is the sense that one and all are so overwhelmed they’re focusing on the band-aid needed right this moment, and not the severe injury it may portend.

Its quality is so refined that one can imagine “On the Fringe” playing in cinemas and not on a streamer. But what would you put on the poster? “Come to the movies, stress yourself out?”

Still, there’s no denying its power and the affecting performances, with Cruz, Tosar and Calvo standing out, and Annaassi’s little girl so helpless, frightened and upset she will haunt your dreams.

Rating: TV-MA, some violence, profanity

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Luis Tosar, Christian Checa, Adelfa Calvo, Aixa Villagrán, Font García, Juan Diego Botto and Salma Naim Annaassi.

Credits: Directed by Juan Diego Botto, scripted by Juan Diego Botto and Olga Rodriguez. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

As of early Saturday, Deadline.com was calling the box office race this weekend too close to call.

The jaunty newcomer “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” did $16 million via Wed and Thursday previews and daytime ticket sales Friday, a probable $40 million take by Sunday night. The weekend looks like a $30 million winner.

But it may not be. The winner, I mean. There’s this little blockbuster, “John Wick 4,” on its second weekend, and also seems en route to $30 million three day take. Considering how enthusiastic the audience seemed last weekend, that number could be low. It opened at over $70 million, and should clear the $125 million mark by midnight Sunday.

The faith-based historical drama “His Only Son” might open at $6 million.

“Creed III” is holding audience better than “Scream VI.” The boxing picture looks to add another $5 million or so.

“Scream” should scare up another $4.5.

SUNDAY update from Box Office Pro below, three day weekend figures. “Dungeons” managed $38 and change since Wednesday.

Is “Murder Mystery 2” worse than 2019’s “Murder Mystery?” Tough call. Mainly because I don’t remember anything about the original save for the reunited of Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler, that “Just Go With It” version of Tracy and Hepburn, for a violent caper comedy.

Hey, you didn’t actually expect me to endorse this garbage, did you? I barely got over throwing up upon hearing Sandler forever devalued The Mark Twain Prize by being honored with it when this meringue-flavored merde dropped into my Netflix queue.

“Murder Mystery 2” is another violent and vulgar and seriously half-assed action “mystery” built around the not-really-private-eyes couple of Nick-the-ex-cop Spitz and his smarter hairdresser wife Audrey, played by less-funny-by-the-year Aniston and Sandler.

They’re debating Nick’s reluctance to read up on how to be a private detective so that he can be licensed by the state — this after he never quite “made detective” with the NYPD — when a wedding invitation jets them to Asia.

It’s a resort nuptials for their rich Indian pal Vik, the Maharah (Adeel Akhatar, not funny) to a stunning Paris “shop girl” he recently met (Mélanie Laurent, classing up the joint). The cast is doing “The Welcome Dance” (a touch of Bollywood) when they’re interrupted by their tycoon host and groom being kidnapped.

Look at the photo above. All of the “suspects” in this inside job are in that shot. Guess who did it?

Assorted exes, siblings and hangers-on could be accused. But just as the Spitzes are about to dive in, this ex-MI6 bloke (Mark Strong) shows up, takes over and slows their roll and yet must tolerate them as the kidnappers request the Spitz dolts be the ones they negotiates with.

“You know what? You’re gonna hurt your back!”

You know what would hurt my back? A knife sticking through it!”

That’s the way the dialogue goes. As for story arc, let’s add another working vacation as enticement for the leads. Let’s exchange the Big Cash Payout for kidnapped Vik in Paris, shall we?

That gives the film the chance to bring back the French Inspector Delacroix (Dany Boon, almost funny), to go along with players including Sophie Turner-Smith, Enrique Arce and Kuhoo Verma, and whatever other random hires are paid to show up in pointless roles (Jillian Bell and Tony Goldwyn).

Sure, it’s mercifully free of the Sandler hangers-on that were a staple of his succession of increasingly awful Hollywood comedies. But one almost wishes somebody with at least a little experience landing a laugh was featured in the supporting cast.

Chemistry between the leads? Not really, but then, the characters have been married for 16 years, so maybe that’s just “realistic.”

Director Jeremy Garelick pays more attention to action beats, including a merrily violent van chase through Paris, a helicopter stunt and vigorous work-outs from Sandler’s and everybody else’s stunt-doubles.

I think I chucked twice, once when Strong lets fly a “Huzzah!”

Rating: PG-13 (Suggestive Material|Bloody Images|Strong Language|Smoking|Violence)

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, Mélanie Laurent, Adeel Akhtar, Jillian Bell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Tony Goldwyn and Mark Strong

Credits: Directed by Jeremy Garelick, scripted by James Vanderbilt. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

Whoa, did NOT see that coming.

I mean, it only took 75 minutes for something, ANYthing to happen in this 93 minute picture. And when it did, boy oh boy.

Just kidding. That was a letdown, too.

“Stalker” is a ridiculously-chatty bore of a thriller, a stunning waste of viewing time about an actress and a second unit photographer stuck in an elevator.

Did I mention the title is “Stalker?” So, one of them’s “stalked” the other? You think? Maybe?

Any way you pose that question feels like a spoiler. But when you give that title to your “claustrophobic” “two-hander,” you’ve given the game away anyway.

It’s a British film set in the States — or maybe Canada, seeing as how wrestler Bret Hart has a bit part as a movie director — about a weary starlet (Sophie Skelton) who has finished another day’s shoot on a horror film, now trapped in a “three star” dump of a hotel whose elevator might have transported Rudolph Valentino, back in the day.

It’s that old. And screenwriter Chris Watt needs to sit down with a Michelin guide and LEARN what a “three star hotel” is.

This one doesn’t have a desk clerk on duty. So when Skelton’s character, Rose Hepburn (clever) calls for help via her in-and-out cellphone (naturally), nobody answers.

This bespectacled, headphoned dweeb (Stuart Brennan, like Skelton, British) who jumps into the lift pre-liftoff looks familiar. To her. He works on the set, too. Turns out he’s there to get B-roll, just a guy and his digital camera, making horror the cheapest way they can in this digital era.

“Daniel” gives off a creepy vibe. Rose seems more depressed than alarmed. But she grills him “to keep my mind off” her claustrophobia. They talk and talk and talk.

He uh, “knows” her.

“I’ve seen you,” he says, tamping down the pervy. “I mean I followed you…followed your career.”

He struggles to come up with solutions to their dilemma. As does she.

The “problem solving” is a joke, as if concieved by somebody whose only experience with elevators is in old movies they’ve watched. Sorry, I’m picking on the screenwriter too much. The direction is as airless as a popped balloon.

No, nobody seems all that manic about what’s happening. There’s zero sense of ugency, fatal all by itself in your typical thriller.

But “Stalker” has too many pre-existing pathologies to ever have a prayer of life. And nothing that happens, even in that livelier (as opposed to comatose) third act, could possibly change that prognosis.

Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Sophie Skelton, Stuart Brennan and Bret Hart.

Credits: Diretected by Steven Johnson, scripted by Chris Watt. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:33

This May 16 release from Magnolia adds another credit to Schrader’s starling third act “comeback” of a career.

Sigourney Weaver also stars. We also hear there’s an anti-vaxxer in the supporting cast. Just judging from that person’s tweets.

Boris Becker — Wimbledon Champion at 17, retired tennis idol at 29, broke and tossed in a British prison at 54.

That’s the story the world’s greatest investigative documentarian, Alex Gibney, sets out to tell and the subject he tries to psychoanalyze in “Boom Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker.”

You can see some of the possibilities Gibney saw, just in that cursory summary of “Boom Boom” Becker, who dominated tennis in the late ’80s into the early ’90s. Gibney won an Oscar for his Afghan expose “Taxi to the Dark Side,”is famous for “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and other “big fish” investigative films on subjects from Scientolgy to Big Pharma. And he’s no stranger to controversial sports figures, having done a series for ESPN and filmed the definitive Lance Armstrong takedown (“The Armstrong Lie”).

But it’s pretty obvious pretty early on that “The World vs. Boris Becker” isn’t anything like that level of deep dive into an athlete’s misbehavior, that Becker’s not remotely the tortured soul or nefarious figure Armstrong turned out to be.

Becker’s sins? He’s been a philanderer. He’s been careless with money, and made stupid decisions. He chased away the coach that made him and the manager that made him rich, and canned the financial planner that made his entitled “retired” life work, so far as he could tell.

Becker’s careless. At least some of his problems — the German ones, anyway — have a whiff of “schadenfreude” about them. And while Gibney suggests this masterful “story teller” — something many a great athlete evolves into — lies, kids himself or dissembles about this or that detail of his rise and fall. Maybe Becker is as lacking in self-awareness as the rest of us.

As a film, “Boom Boom” has a hard time justifying the exhaustive three and a half hours, in two parts, that the irons-in-many-fires Gibney delivered to Apple TV+. In sports metaphor terms, Gibney didn’t lay a glove on him. But it’s still a worthwhile film, simply in a sporting sense.

Gibney, serving as narrator and interrogator, tells us that he landed two stretches of time to chat up his subject — 2019 and 2022, just as Becker was facing sentencing. That may explain the film’s surface gloss feel, something Gibney tries to compensate for in his narration. But given three and a half hours of our time, we have a right to expect something a lot deeper.

In part one, “Triumph,” Becker briefly skims over his childhood — winning his first tennis tourney at 6, his dropping out of school to turn professional and his meteoric rise — coached by Germany’s best and managed by the inscrutable Romanian, Ion Tiriac, who becomes the “star” of this documentary.

In part two, “Disaster,” we get a cursory glance at the ways Becker got himself into trouble, abandoning some trusted advisors, losing his dad just when he was entering retirement and needed him the most.

“Boom Boom” is at its best as a tennis doc. The “downfall” material is wide and broad enough to be interesting, but seems lower stakes and more referenced than deeply explored.

As Becker leads us on a behind-the-scenes locker tour at the All England Tennis Club in Wimbledon, hear him embrace the famed Rudyard Kipling “triumph” and “disaster” quote that is the last thing players see before entering the stadium, and tells tales of what was going on in this or that match and the pre-courtside-mike trash talk and gamesmanship that was going on, “Boom Boom” really hits its stride.

The man retired having won 64 titles, and matches and moments with the great (Sampras, Agassi, Lendl, McEnroe) and the forgotten are memorably recalled and recreated here.

Becker was as temperamental as the American “brats,” Conners and McEnroe — but also a gloriously demonstrative winner. That’s probably why he was revered in his German homeland and became “Britain’s favorite German” in his adoptive one, the place that felt like “home” — Wimbledon.

His willingness to dive for shots, “to go where it hurts a little bit to win the point” became his trademark. His dominant serve-and-volley game made him intimidating, but those dives had to unnerve everybody who came up against him in those early years.

Using archival footage from matches and decades of interviews, including lovely bloom-of-youth “Boris returns to Wimbledon” material, Gibney paints a portrait of the athlete’s storied professional life.

But much of what we really learn about him from back then comes from Tiriac, an unforgettable figure who haunted tournaments starring his famous client, supposedly secretly “coaching” from the stands — a bear of a man with a fu manchu mustache, omnipresent shades, a suit and a cigarette always on his lips.

Tiriac may be less imposing in his dotage, but his refreshing bluntness and sharp memory make him stand out. He became Becker’s business manager and quasi-life coach, having enjoyed a bit of notoriety as a player himself in the ’70s.

His advice after that first Wimbledon win?

“When you walk off the court, you’re a wanted man.”

Like Borg before him, Becker became a matinee idol. Unlike Borg, he tried to work “having a good time” and living his life into the training, focus and constant public attention. Another lesson of the film is that nobody is really ready for that, and yet there’s no excuse for not taking care with who you surround yourself with.

The director of “Wendy & Lucy,” which starred Michelle Williams and a missing dog, now has this small stakes art world dramedy slated for April 7 in LA, NYC, wider later in the month.

Michelle Williams, Hong Chau and Judd Hirsch star. I posted a trailer for this last year, but now it has an opening date.

“A Good Person,” which earned a token, desultory release from MGM, is more than its novelty of being a film that Florence Pugh made for her then writer-director beau, Zach Braff, prior to breaking up.

It’s a see-saw of emotions, tones, dull tropes mixed with novel twists, and carried along for much of its excessive run time by a couple of great performances.

If all Braff had gotten out of it was another shot at recapturing his elusive “Garden State” sensitive indie character-study-in-Jersey mojo, this might be a write-off. But writing a wonderful part for Pugh, an addict lost in pills and lost in West Orange thanks to the crippling guilt of surviving a car accident that killed her prospective in-laws, and giving the great Morgan Freeman a role that — while “cuddly,” his late career brand — has enough edge to be worthy of him makes “Scrubs” icon Braff worthy of our thanks.

Pugh plays Allison, a lively pharmaceutical saleswoman whom we meet at a gathering celebrating her engagement to Nathan (Chinaza Uche). Pounding away at the piano and singing along, she is the tipsy life of that party. Later, there’s a little something extra to take the edge off the evening.

The next day, she’s driving her future sister-and-brother-in-law (Nichelle Hines, Toby Onwumere) into “the city” to shop for wedding dresses and catch a TKTS discounted play and there’s an accident.

One year later, Allison’s unemployed, hooked on Oxy and living with her co-dependent Mom (Molly Shannon, superb). It gets so bad that she finds herself quasi-blackmailing a fellow pharma rep and broke and hitting up a couple of lowlifes from her high school days for a fix.

“I didn’t think I was better than you,” she explains to the deadenders/street-dealers. “I knew it.”

Her self-medicating mom tries to push her in the same direction as a stickler pharmacist. “Rehab” might be off the table for the uninsured. But 12 steps? That could be her lifeline.

Wouldn’t you know it, it’s the same AA group that her embittered, estranged, almost father-in-law (Freeman) is in. He’s been driven back towards the bottle thanks to having to raise the granddaughter (Celeste O’Connor) orphaned in Allison’s accident.

Braff has always leaned towards music he described as “sensie” pop — a tad too hip to be maudlin — and is at his best writing and telling a story about characters who fit that description in a film scored by the likes of Odessa, Cary Brothers and Angelo de Augustine tunes.

Pugh and Freeman have terrific chemistry. His sweet-spot, almost lost in years of sentimental pap, was emotional but with a scary edge. Ex-cop Daniel may philosophize and voice-over narrate this tale in model train metaphors, but we can figure out he knows the truth about the wreck and he’s never really going to forgive it.

Braff’s tendency to undercut emotion with easy laughs — a hallmark of the TV series that formed him as an actor and writer-director — works for and against “A Good Person.” The terrible cost this accident has had on granddaughter Ryan is never dismissed, but it is given its cute put-downs.

“I need a dog crate the size of a teenager,” Daniel quips. Oxy? “It’s heroin in a pretty little dress.”

There’s an entirely too abrupt “Let’s be friends” turn in the Allison/Ryan relationship. The kid knows how her parents died and who did it, after all.

And the film shows evidence of Netflix editing — that slack tendency to leave in scenes and characters who don’t advance to plot and make the pace plodding, tailor made for streaming over the course of a long, rainy afternoon.

But Pugh has never been better than she is here, utterly immersed in the character’s accent and world-shrinking despair. And Freeman lends some flint and fire and sparkle to this simple redemption tale that touches, amuses, overreaches and overstays its welcome.

Rating: R for drug abuse, language throughout and some sexual references.

Cast: Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman, Celeste O’Connor, Chinaza Uche, Zoe Lister-Jones and Molly Shannon.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Zach Braff. An MGM release.

Running time: 2:08

“Air” is a beautifully featherweight triumph of “on-the-nose” casting.

Need a guy to play a folksy spinner of anecdotes, a gambler and maker of speeches who converts the Non-Believers? Matt Damon, who has spent his career (“Good Will Hunting,” “Rounders,” “Ford v. Ferrari,” “Oceans Eleven”) playing variations of dogged, emotional “bet-the-wad” Nike shoe basketball guru Sonny Vacarro, seems perfect.

His office confidante, wide-eyed glad-hander quick with a quip — he’s the one who tells the condemned man origins of the Nike slogan, “Just do it!” — and quickest-of-all to play the “Black” card? Chris Tucker, of course.

Their bitchy, doubting, hard-to-convince boss? Jason Bateman lives and breathes Nike exec Rob Strasser.

Who on Earth could play future NBA GOAT Michael Jordan’s mother? Oscar winner Viola Davis makes us “Believe” Earth mother/canny businesswoman Deloris Jordan in our bones.

Nike’s zen hustler, self-mythologizer and not-as-ditzy as he might come-off founder and CEO, Phil Knight? If you think that’s a stretch for Ben Affleck, you haven’t seen him in ginger curls.

Affleck steps back behind the camera for a feel-good movie that takes us back to the mid-80s, back when athletic shoe behemoth and future sweatshop scandal Nike could be considered an underdog, a Beaverton, Oregon running shoe/track suit operation that had no prayer against the big dogs who shoed the then-dying NBA’s all-stars.

“Basketball’s the future,” the seemingly listless lump Vacarro, “the Mister Miyagi of high school hoops” sermonizes the Big Boss.

“The NBA finals are on tape delay (broadcast),” Porsche-driving, sloganeering runner Knight fires back. “It’s literally ‘the past.'”

“Air” is about Vaccaro’s vision, how he breaks down that last NCAA championship-winning shot from the skinny, “too small” kid from Wilmington, N.C., how he sees what is special about that year’s number three draft pick and convinces his colleagues and the viewer to see “the future” with him.

To do that, he’ll need a Hail Mary. He’ll need a Carroll Shelby/”Ford. v Ferrari” speech or two to Bateman’s Strasser, to Knight, to the Real Power in the Jordan family, his mother Deloris.

He’ll need to outfox staid Converse and Teutonic terror Adidas, to placate or at least neutralize Jordan’s high-rolling, dismissive agent David Falk, played to the very hilt by Chris Messina at his most abrasively unctuous.

And he’ll need to convince Nike’s shoe-design-and-marketing guru Peter Moore, played by Matthew Maher as the final perfectly-cast-piece of the “Air” bubble, to scramble and turn out a shoe for the ages, one that would change the game, the athletic shoe industry and the pro athlete-“owner” dynamic forever.

Think Mister “How’d ya like THEM apples” is up to it?

Affleck practically drowns the viewer in montages of mid-80s figures — Reagan to Magic, Bruce Jenner to Arthur Ashe, whose Head tennis racket TV pitch inspire Vaccaro’s Hail Mary, “Make Mike the Brand.”

We hear a tsunami of ’80s pop, sample the hairstyles and tracksuits, the pagers and Coleco video games and ugly Towncars and grape Porsche that was Knight’s pride-and-joy.

It’s almost like the director of “Argo” and “The Town” feels the need to try-too-hard. And when Sonny launches into a spiel (complete with sports/news footage montage) of what ugly downside “the future” holds for young Jordan (seen only from behind, like Jesus and Muhammad), it really does try too hard.

Yes, playing “All I Need is a Miracle” is so on-the-nose it’s grating.

But every time “Air” strays, this great cast brings it back. Messina flirts with caricature as everybody’s idea of the threatening, loud, barely-principled agent and for all Affleck/Knight’s zen koans about “Our business is ‘change,'” “Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment,” Affleck’s gutsiest call is to make Knight the object of fun.

It’s hard to maintain a myth after we’ve seen that hair, that car, those legs in track leggings and that “smartest guy in the room” almost blunder the deal that made Knight and upended athletics and how financial athletic success is measured.

My favorite scenes were the little grace notes that arrive when Vaccaro and Strasser decide “It’s time to see Pete.” Maher, practically an Affleck discovery (“Gone Baby Gone” and he’s even in the donuts commercials Affleck is doing) makes Pete the real zen master of this operation, a midlife-crisis on a skateboard who engineered the engineering part of the Great Shoe Coup, an artist who turned Air Jordan into an image of superhuman basketball flight.

And Affleck, cunning devil of a director that he is, gives the damned shoe its own “star entrance.”

Sure, it gets to be a bit much and kind of misses its drop-the-mike/”Be Like Mike” moment. But “Air” has everything we want in a feel-good sports movie — plucky underdogs, big speeches that deliver heart and a cast that, once you’ve seen it, you can’t imagine anybody else in that paunchy dad-bod or those never-really-in-style red curls.

Rating: R for language throughout.

Cast: Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Matthew Maher, Marlon Wayans, Julius Tennon, Jay Mohr and Chris Messina.

Credits: Directed by Ben Affleck, scripted by Alex Convery. An Amazon Studios release.

Running time: 1:52