Supposedly,
it is based on a “true story,” but even “inspired by” would be overstating
matters. Chinese telecom giant Huawei has been accused of secretly installing backdoors
in their products at the behest of the Mainland intelligence services. They
have been accused of using bribery and strong-arm tactics to win contracts in
the developing world, as well as doing end-runs around China’s labor laws.
Obviously, they are the good guys. That is probably why even local audiences
took a pass on Tan Bing’s China Salesman (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Peace
has been declared in this unnamed African country and the former combatants are
determined to beat their swords into a nation-wide 3G network. The scrappy
Chinese company DH wants that contract, but all the opportunistic western firms
sneer at them like Snidely Whiplash, because nobody believes the Chinese telecom
sector can be competitive in this bizarre alternate universe. Susanna, the
French NGO bureaucrat implementing the government’s bidding process even derisively
refers to our hero Yan Jian as “China Salesman.”
He
has been dispatched to assist stalwart division head Ruan Ling during the
bidding process. Yan will be handy to have around, because he apparently serves
R&D, sales, marketing, and IT functions at DH. Of course, the evil
westerners want to stop them, so they contract a crusty old merc named Lauder
and Kabbah, the heir to an ancient tribal kingdom to do their dirty work. Yet,
even though they are initially on the same side, Lauder and Kabbah still have
an inexplicable knock-down drag-out fight in the first act, because they are played
by Steven Seagal and Mike Tyson. At least the film gets that right.
And
that’s about it. China Salesman is
naked propaganda of the most ludicrous variety. Nothing here rings true here or
will shift hearts and minds in the slightest. Perhaps most amusing is Mexican-born
Marc Philip Goodman shamelessly hamming it up as the dastardly American, albeit
one that speaks with an impenetrable accent that sounds like a Flemish waiter
working at a Tapas restaurant in Cypress.
Norwegian-born
Parisian model Janicke Askevold also looks super-uncomfortable as Susanna, especially
when she and Yan are supposed to be developing a romance. Frankly, their
chemistry is so iffy, the film is constantly shutting them down and rebooting
them. Likewise, Lauder and Kabbah change sides so frequently, we’re guessing
Seagal and Tyson kept losing their scripts.
