The Integrity of Joseph Chambers

Yet another covid movie with few actors and constant navel inspection. These movies should come with a 'dont bother' warning. As you sit waiting for something to happen you wonder how come the star doesnt get lost which is typical of in the woods scenarios. How come this and that without giving too much away. HOWEVER the real audience insult is the non ending where you rise from your chair and swear at the tv for wasting those minutes from your life you wont get back. Some Directors think this is 'arty' or forced thought provoking but in this case it needed a conclusion. As society no longer automatically rewards the good and virtuous and if happy to punish the innocent this was one movie that badly needed a conclusion. If time is a consideration cut out all the aimless wandering and give us a result.

Self portrait of just how unprepared we are, for just about everything. This is a bit of a dark comedy in that a regular working joe who's a good guy decides to go deer hunting on land owned by a friend, but he knows nothing about shooting hunting or even how to walk thru the woods. After much distraction contemplation and singing to himself, a deer finally appears in a field just ahead of him easily within rifle range. He is totally clueless as what to do next and starts running after the deer with his rifle, when something completely unexpected happens, leaving him to do something men are actually good at. Messing things up, then trying to cover it up. Worth watching to observe what modernity convenience and easy living have made us into, even with our best intentions.

This is not a shoot 'em up or an action flick, with the one shot actually fired occurring almost by accident. The real meaning is to be found only in the message, which is both clever and delivered subtly. Pay attention to the beliefs of the family that are revealed in just a few lines of dialogue. Modern moviegoers don't like having to pay attention.

Muchgrace.church.

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.

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.