'Ghostbox Cowboy' Is Fascinating, Atmospheric & Utterly Strange [Tribeca Review]

Americans have always been uniquely susceptible to a gold rush mentality, the promise of easy riches just over the horizon. This idea first lured people across the Atlantic, then across the prairies, and now in the 21st century, across the Pacific to China. “Ghostbox Cowboy,” the feature-length drama debut of documentarian John Maringouin, tells the story of one such fortune-hunting American, Jimmy Van Horn (David Zellner, better known as the director of “Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter”) as he travels to Shenzen with a few bitcoins, the prototype of a ghost-communication device, and limitless dreams.

The film begins a brief, hellish introduction in America, showing the final destination of cheap Chinese goods on shelves in discount stores and discarded by the side of the road, in the midst of which we see Jimmy adopt the cowboy persona that he’ll use in China. Once in China, Jimmy’s ambitions are at first flattered by a circle of American friends, most notably Bob (Robert Longstreet), an entrepreneur/grifter selling dentures who has transformed himself with a blonde wig and fake tan into the caricature of Westerners that the Chinese seem to view with both desire and contempt. “America is dead,” he proclaims to Jimmy as he promises to turn Jimmy’s 40k into several million. Jimmy can’t believe his luck when he meets investors willing to throw a lavish launch party; he also can’t believe it when he drunkenly flubs his speech and learns afterward that he was footing the bill for the entire event.

Soon, Jimmy has lost everything and is virtually homeless, reduced to adopting Bob’s “American” costume and trying to hawk hoverboards or performing at a wedding as “American cowboy and movie star, Mr. Randy.” And even then his poor efforts at forced frivolity earn him verbal abuse and no payment but KFC coupons. Out of options, Jimmy travels to a ghost town, a speculative city built for millions but currently only inhabited by dozens, to find his shadowy friend Jimmy Mai Tai (J.R. Cazet) and a darkly ironic end to his journey.

Filmed in a handheld, documentary style, “Ghostbox Cowboy” channels the growing disorientation that Jimmy experiences in China. While true to the subject, the confusion hampers the overall story. For example, the climactic meeting with Jimmy Mai Tai is filmed in a cool, “Apocalypse Now” style, yet totally lacking in any emotional impact since. Unlike Col. Kurtz, the audience has little idea of who Jimmy is or why he really matters. Jimmy is a relatively flat character, mostly serving as a pair of inquisitive eyes; indeed, the ghost box proves more dynamic than Jimmy, getting ripped off and repurposed as a “ghost repellent.”

But “Ghostbox Cowboy” shines in its details, the documentarian eye that Maringouin casts on the world of American-Chinese business relations and the dubious guanxi (business favors) that grease the wheels. Other than Zellner and Longstreet, the film consists of non-actors and mostly real Chinese residents. One of the most interesting non-professional performers (and also a co-writer, credited only as “specialist” not to jeopardize his Chinese business) is an American who rails against his homeland for not recognizing his genius (all of the film’s Americans failed at home). But he seems to thrive in China’s cutthroat business culture partly due to his open misanthropy. Another interesting character is a Chinese factory owner, whose total control over his workers impresses the Americans, yet whom is consumed by loneliness and travels to America looking for greater fulfillment (and the chance to shoot guns).

Walking down neon-lit streets in his cowboy hat, Jimmy recalls Dennis Hopper in “The American Friend,” yet it’s striking how much the cultural calculus has changed since that 1977 film. Hopper’s cowboy persona was part of his armor, a swaggering reminder of the economic forces he represented as he profiteered in rebuilding Europe. For Jimmy, the cowboy persona seems to mark him as a rube to be relieved of his money, until that persona is all he has left to sell. Fascinating, atmospheric, and utterly strange in ways both good and bad, “Ghostbox Cowboy” pulls back the curtain on those trying to export the American dream and reaping the whirlwind. [B+]

Follow along with all our 2018 Tribeca Film Festival coverage here.