The Integrity of Joseph Chambers

Insurance Salesman Joe decides to champion his inner Bear Grylls and challenge his surgical skills in the wild. Armed with a rifle, he aims to shoot a deer.

This surprised me somewhat, I rather enjoyed it, a story of foolishness and trying to prove a point. It doesn't go as I expected, which is in its favour. Pacing has been pointed out by several as an issue, but if argue it's purposefully slow, feeling as though it was done in real time, it doesn't lurch from one action scene to the next. Efforts were made to make the film seem realistic.

A film about masculinity, it actually made for something of a change to the recent films I've seen, where masculinity is simply deemed bad, here it does at least explore and question it.

Considering Clayne Crawford does most of the film solo, he does a pretty fine job, a good performance.

Overall, this was much better than I expected.

7/10.

Joseph Chambers sells insurance for a living and he apparently makes a good living doing so. He is seen at the start of the story dressing up for a solo hunting adventure, much to the displeasure of his wife. Against her wise advice, the city slicker borrows a deer rifle from a friend for his first expedition.

His trek eventually turns out badly and the second half of the movie has Joseph making a few important decisions.

His future is dependent upon what moral choices he will ultimately make. Clayne Crawford is on screen alone for most of the film and he is excellent as Joseph Chambers. Will he or won't he do what is right?

As you can see I have very mixed feelings about this curate's egg.

The set up is great. A city boy has married a country girl and wants to prove that he can go hunting in local woods in his own Alexander Supertramp moment. He has no experience, no idea and no chance of success. Every stumble over a twig or branch is torture. His fumbling loading of the gun is cringeworthy. The ease with which he gets distracted is mind numbing.

I won't say how all this plays out but we can see it coming a mile away. This is mostly because of the interminable slow pace of the film which will have the average viewer anxiously looking at their watch fro a half hour in.

Could have been a short story.

Is this the eclectic art and croissant crowd that mistakes ind film projects as a level of depth in an abstraction, professed with transcendence of varying topography of hypocrisy, and.... (What the hell?)

It's not an experiment in anything but delusions: is probably too real to be a thing else.

Money from business, that " good" at ("you're a great insurance salesman") never mind the pronoun (for shame).

Makes money, check. Nice house and wife, double check.

Arse and incompetent... Yeah, that's about right.

So the the Ineptitude of Joseph Chambers involves an idiot, no training, maybe on the spectrum, Rich friend won't stop him just send of to have fun with a rifle not sure which end is which.

Yeah, brilliant.

I get the point of this movie, it's not bad in that sense, as it has one.

Overall it looks quite realistic and you can relate to the characters, they are believable.

There are some quite lengthy parts in this movie that seemingly do nothing.

And the biggest problem is the abrupt ending with no good conclusion other than the obvious.

So what I'd like to say is that you can have all those lengthy parts in the movie, where the character is explored and developed and etc, even if nothing much happens, but it is only reasonable and justifiable if you then have an ending where the character and the whole story blooms and all of this previous stalling now gets a meaning. But there was no such thing in this one.

So there is clearly no reason to stretch this story to 90 minutes. This whole movie could've been 15 minutes long and conceptually it would lose absolutely nothing.