"I don't want peace. I want war." These are practically the first words we hear from Fidelis Cloer, luxury armored vehicle salesman and the subject of Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's documentary Bulletproof Salesman. Just how serious Cloer is when he says this, prompted by seeing a man with a peace sign, reflects the ambiguity driving this fascinating, if limited, character profile.
When we meet Cloer and his team, they are en route to Baghdad shortly after the start of the Iraq War. Things have settled down now that Sadaam has been defeated, but Cloer has a sense, based on his experience in places like Sarajevo, that the real fighting has only just begun, and his services will be in high demand. His services involve providing luxury vehicles that can withstand everything from small arms fire to massive explosions. As it turns out, even he underestimates just how bad the insurgency will be. He goes from making cold calls to heads of security (when even Ahmed Chalabi was driving around in an unprotected car) to trucking in hundreds of armored vehicles at a time.
This uptick in business is prompted, unsurprisingly, by the deaths of contractors, journalists, and emissaries by insurgents ambushing unprotected vehicles, a fact that reflects one of the film's disturbing motifs: Death is good for business. And not just in the obvious way. Every time a bullet penetrates a vehicle or a roadside bomb turns an SUV into shrapnel, it gives Cloer's company the data it needs to improve their designs.
Cloer seems unfazed by this dynamic, simply seeing it as a part of the business he's chosen. Why he chose it remains a mystery. Epperlein and Tucker seem more interested in a real-time profile of Cloer without really digging into his past or motivations. The topic of what it means to be a war profiteer comes up, but Cloer generally dismisses it by comparing what he does to someone who supplies medical supplies or even Coca-Cola in a time of war. He seems to have as much to say, if not more, about what it means to be a good salesman and a good engineer. Still, his concern for saving lives, even as he concedes the idea of the Iraq War being a "perfect war" for his business, comes through.
While the film drags at first as Cloer makes his initial sales calls, it tends to pick up when the situation in Iraq becomes more complex and he has to deal with IEDs replacing bullets as the weapon of choice, government corruption and theft, and being undercut by competitors hawking a shoddier product at lower prices. When the action moves to Afghanistan, which Cloer considers safe by comparison, we see grim harbingers of what came before.
Epperlein and Tucker's boots-on-the-ground shooting style is occasionally embellished with superimposed text that can come off as gimmicky but usually works. Cloer himself is an engaging persona - as, he would assert, any good salesman should be - and is compelling to watch, but the admittedly brief 70-minute run time still feels like a stretched out version of a smaller piece on 60 Minutes. Perhaps a deeper exploration of Cloer himself or the moral complexity of benefiting from violence by trying to protect people from it could have made for a richer film, but the perspective Bulletproof Salesman provides is still an interesting and unique one.
