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In the 1960s, economic high times in the West triggered the rise of so-called “Europuddings,” tortured contractual liaisons between international talents whose feature-film products were often the cinematic equivalent of Esperanto — something intended to appeal to everyone, but so culturally disconnected and artistically generic as to typically wind up pleasing no one.

Today’s emerging equivalent may be represented by “China Salesman,” which is apparently what happens when umpteen private investors (those companies and producers listed below are just the tip of an iceberg) plus the Prc government pool their resources to make a popcorn extravaganza both populist and propagandistic. How that resulted in a largely Africa-set action adventure jumble involving industrial-political espionage, not to mention the inimitable starring combo of Mike Tyson and Steven Seagal (actually billed here as “Steve”), is anyone’s guess. Indeed, a tell-all chronicle about how this movie came into existence might be more compelling than the film itself,...