The Integrity of Joseph Chambers

As I was watching this film, it wasn't long into it, that I start noticing the stupidity of the characters. I suppose that in itself is entertaining, but usually it's more frustrating and maddening. This film definitely doesn't lead you into laughing about the ridiculousness of stupidity either.

I asked myself WHY I continued to watch this movie....clear up to the last 15 minutes. And that is when it became clear.

Then the ending left me with different questions.

I like that!!

I bet many people will not understand or like this movie. I'm not sure I understand it....

All I can say is I liked it. It made me think and feel.

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 am rarely this negative on a movie, but the fact that all those reviews that gave this a great rating got me suckered into wasting my time watching this...? Don't be fooled like I was!

This movie simply is not working h the time it takes to watch. It is one of the SLOWEST moving movies that I have ever seen! And it's not like a "Good" slow, either. You know, the kinda that actually rewards your anticipation with a great scene. Nope. This movie is literally filled with scenes that drag on, and on, and on, and on... and the fact that there is hardly ANY dialogue going on in this movie only makes these scenes MORE brutal! It truly feels like the film maker was just trying to fill in a bunch of "dead time" to make this movie as long as it is. Because honestly, this story could have been told 20-30 minutes.

What an utter waste of time. Don't bother!

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.