CHINA SALESMAN: Will The World Buy?

Wow! This film is the future. It boasts a Chinese director and producer, an international ensemble with throwback American stars and an African setting. An action thriller allegedly based on a true story from a few years back, when 3G cell phones were the latest technology, it has already been released throughout Asia and bought for distribution in America. That story is so stylized it hardly matters. The protagonist, the Chinese salesman of the literal-minded title (changed from the sublimely lurid Deadly Contract in its overseas version), is an earnest engineer submitting a bid for the cell phone monopoly to be awarded by a generic third world regime.

Despite the details about rival transmission protocols being explicated to negligible dramatic effect, the conspiracy that results is not explained well enough for the reasonable person to follow. Suffice to say that the fellow somehow becomes mixed up in a civil war involving a lost tribe, mineral rights, missile smuggling, and a goat that has wandered off.

Who Wins If It’s Tyson versus Segal?

Oh, and Mike Tyson and Steven Segal fight it out! That is the primary attraction of the feature. That single scene is worth the price of admission if you are a fan of either – and surely, everyone buying a ticket will be coming to see them. It apparently took considerable negotiation to bring together the two heavyweights. They both wanted to win their battle. Producers are urged to bring them back. There remains considerable footage to be filmed with these two judging by this outing.

The Hangover (2009) gave us Tyson cuddling a French bulldog, in a cameo that could only be meant to provoke cognitive dissonance. If that did not satisfy the ache to see the boxing champion/sexual predator display his acting chops, “the baddest man on the planet” here looks from some angles uncannily like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and sounds as if he has been dubbed. As the leader of the lost tribe, who commissioned some sort of study of his members’ whereabouts scattered throughout the continent, he conducts surveillance with a long telephoto lens on a camera and a parabolic microphone.

He inspires the opposite of the suspension of disbelief, pointing props as he has been told to do. His behavior, whether “acting” or not, is weirdly compelling in prompting an acute awareness he is being forced to recite lines. It could be a psychological study on the absence of inner life. Tyson also rides around in a tank through the desert. He would not likely be mistaken for James Mason playing Rommel, the World War II commander known as the “Desert Fox” in the eponymous movie (1951).

Executive Decision offered a poignant Segal cameo, his finest performance in his sleeker days before straight-to-video VHS tapes and social media clips of his training sessions. This appearance has slightly greater screen time with equal spectacle. He remains well-coiffed, but his wardrobe cannot hide his girth — which by itself does not disqualify others from displaying skill in the martial arts, as demonstrated by Sammo Hung. Segal is unembarrassed, which itself should be deemed a form of mastery.

He is calm, as if biding his time for a comeback. He is a mercenary at odds with Tyson because marketing demands it be so. It should be said, however, that the opportunity to size up Tyson and Segal mano a mano in the art of acting is to the latter’s considerable advantage.

The remainder of the plot concerns the restoration of service from a cell phone tower – presumably, the typical utility repair job is not hampered by artillery shelling. There have been missions as ridiculous in the cinematic annals. Star Wars Rogue One is a recent example, though of course somebody had to have wedged that chip into R2D2 to play the hologram of Princess Leia summoning old Ben Kenobi as “my only hope.”

East Versus West?

In this earthbound diversion, there is the strong suggestion that the Europeans in charge will discriminate against the Asians, even if they insist “only technology matters.” The prejudice is about as mild as could be depicted. In an earlier era, a Hollywood product would have used an outright racial slur instead of “Chinese guy” to refer to the hero. He nonetheless takes umbrage at being addressed as “Chinese salesman” in lieu of his name, Yan Jian (Dongxue Li).

He instead could take solace that this is a movie with a karate champion and an Asian, and they are not the same individual. He doesn’t look like the type to deliver, much less receive, a kick to the head. The parties that ought to be aggrieved are the Africans in the background, because they appear to have no autonomy against either Europeans or Asians. That may be, sadly, the most realistic aspect of the picture.

No doubt the Chinese salesman is a stand-in for a people. Jian’s success, or lack thereof, will be interpreted by him and by allies and enemies alike as national in nature. As can be predicted, he wins it all. He even, rather surprisingly given the modicum of foreshadowing, “gets the girl” as they used to say. His antagonist, the Frenchwoman Susanna, falls for him. The actress in the role, Janicke Askevold, must have had a contract clause specifying that she be lit differently than all others in the cast. She glows as if softboxes were arranged for her especially.

The romance of Jian and Susanna (her lack of surname confirms her ultimate insignificance) must have started in the scene in the desert, when Jian rescues her, clad in a white pants suit — at least she had sense to change into low heels. As risible as their escape, he under heavy fire with a helpless female in tow, it is no worse, nor better in its simplistic sexism, than an episode of a 1980s American TV series such as the A-Team.

This may be the “inflection point,” as the trend would have us call it, the moment a mainland Chinese movie breaks out at the American box office. Not that long from now, historians will look back at Zhang Yimou’s Great Wall, starring Matt Damon, as the big-budget mash-up of East and West, along with this B-movie as the advent of global entertainment. Hong Kong hits and art house specialties have reached viewers. But there is potential here to entertain mass, mainstream audiences as never before.

As China builds its immense, transformative “one belt, one road” infrastructure, it will need dozens of flicks such as this to show along the route. The locals might prefer The Man with the Iron Fists, the hip hop kung fu cult classic that is populist to the max, to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Oscar-nominated wuxia masterpiece that is as cerebral as a movie with swords could be. China Salesman would make a better double feature paired with the former than the latter.

High Brow Versus Low Brow?

Whether a critic should limit themselves to judging a thing for what it is, on its own terms, is a perennial consideration. Whether appropriate for morality, relativism is common as to aesthetics, a focus not on universal norms but instead the criteria within which an artist has chosen to express herself. An example of how that can be done is the late Susan Sontag celebrating “camp.” The famous essay was one of many that established her as an icon of iconoclasm. She described respectfully an aesthetic associated with gay culture, which others had dismissed as effete, fey, a put on.

Perhaps that sensibility is vital for appreciating movies such as this. It is schlock that can be praised for what it purports to be. A movie with Tyson and Segal is properly compared with their oeuvre, not with, say, Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

We can revel in China Salesman without shame, if we desire to be entertained. The term “guilty pleasure” reserves a none-too-secret snobbery. It is a means by which the critic eats the cake and has it too, declaring they are above what amused them, merely allowing the function of providing pleasure.

That is the wrong phrase. This movie has a purity to it. Its ambitions are commercial as well as cultural. Applause is always due for that yearning to make a mark on the world for one’s self and as a representative of much more. The problem with praising a movie such as China Salesman is you won’t be taken seriously. Yet it is part of a phenomenon to be reckoned with: the ascent of Asia.

Will Chinese movies make it in the West? Do they have to be like Hollywood movies from the 1980s?

China Salesman was released as Deadly Contract throughout Asia in 2017; it will be released June 15, 2018 in the United States.