The Integrity of Joseph Chambers

A family man, hoping to prove his survivalist capabilities and manliness to his family, decides to irresponsibly head off into the woods and go deer hunting by himself. The second feature narrative I saw at Southern Screen and it was intriguing if for no other reason that the trailers kept it pretty shady as far as what actually ends up happening. This set up has plenty of potential so as long as it wasn't just a man walking around the woods with no shake-ups at all I assumed I'd like it all right. Thankfully something DOES happen.... but not much. My friend watching this movie with me at one points in the first third said "I guess this is a slow burn" and he wasn't kidding because everything in this movie is slow. And that's mostly because they show nearly everything that happens and then hold on every shot FOREVER. Somewhere out there there is a 40 minute cut of this 1h36m movie and it changes nothing about the story. We see very little but him doing mundane tasks for the first half; getting ready, walking through the woods, looking around, walking through the woods some more, etc. Many of these are long takes which would be impressive if more was actually happening. Highlighting that is the very misguided sound mixing. I'm guessing in post they realized the film didn't have much to hold interest for these incredibly long moments so they decided to jazz it up with some loud music stings and overbearing score moments. They feel like they are trying to convert what's happening on screen as something alarming. Just when you think nothings gonna happen 🎵 DUN-DUN! 🎶....nothing happens. They all feel like purposeful ruses to keep you awake. "Be scared by this!" Other times I wanted spoken moments louder or at the very least to have subtitles to understand the whispery deliveries. Near the halfway mark we finally get our shake-up moment that gives this some actual stakes. I won't spoil it much but it does give our main character a moral dilemma to grapple with. However it does come with its own annoyances and moments where characters make odd decisions "just because." Switching to some positives, I have to give props to Clayne Crawford who basically has to hold the film together. If his performance had been subpar I don't think the film would be worth anything but he has to hold the camera for pretty much the entire film. He has to convey most of his emotions with very little dialogueI, and any time it is spoken he has the task of trying to make talking to yourself look realistic. I also like the moments where Joe is reenacting something in his head and we hear what he hears. At one point he is throwing dirt clod in the woods imagining he's pitching at the World Series and we actually hear the crowds cheering and other sfx. It's a relatable peek into his mind, a nice way of showing it, and feeds into his insecurities about how he sees himself. He's a guy who wants to be taken seriously and prove he can provide outside of his career as an insurance salesman, this being the reasoning behind why he takes off on this solo hunting venture in the first place. When faced with two choices the movie does ultimately end up going the direction I was hoping for but there were still plenty of other routes I was hoping for prior to that. While the integrity of the title character can be admired, the movie as a whole still leaves much to be desired.

As a hunter I'll say we all gotta start somewhere. We've all been an amateur at some point! But as soon as Joe started wielding a gun it was truly cringeworthy. The foreshadowing was in place once he racked that round in before starting his walk. We all knew where the story was going by this point. The only thing I found truely unbelievable was how he made a reflex 180 shot on the homeless guy. Center of mass 40 yards away or so. I'm just impressed with the marksmanship after showing how incompetent he was with the gun. Overall not a bad movie, a bit slow but that's ok. Definitely makes me a little more afraid of hunting public land with the thought of other joe chambers running around out there.

City guy tries to step out of his element and go into the wilderness to hunt by himself and as expected, it goes horribly wrong. You can see that coming just from the car he drives. He's not a rugged guys, he's an idiot. So I understand the point of the movie. What I don't understand is why it's soon freaking long. It's an hour and 20 minutes too long. There's only one event the entire time. There's so little happening they dragged every scene to the point of causing me to have fits of rage! So I watched it on fast forward speed and didn't miss a thing. The movie should have been maybe 20 minutes.

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.

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.

Wow. I love a good slow movie, but The Integrity of Joesph Chambers is only one of these two.... and good is not it. I would say the only reason I did not give up on it within the first thirty minutes is that I was substitute teaching and had a two hour break. I would be a bit more pissed that my time was wasted had I been at home and watched this incredible bore on my personal time. I remember when I first graduated film school I wished that all movies were the hours long. I wanted to see more and be entertained. As I have gotten older I realized that not everything is worthy of being made into a movie and that many stories can be told in a quarter of the time. Maybe I would have enjoyed this a year more had all the fat been cut off and it was thirty minutes. Boring. Go watch something better.

This movie tells the story of a city slicker who fancies himself as a hunter. He has absolutely no outdoor skills whatsoever and is as clumsy as heck. With a borrowed rifle, which he has no idea how to handle and in fact handles it very dangerously, shoving a bullet into the clip that fell on the ground and got a bit muddy, he says goodbye to his wife and young family and sets off into the forest to kill a deer for the freezer. On reaching the woods he makes his way along a trail, then through thick undergrowth. I was waiting for the moment when the fool would trip over and shoot himself in the head, but he was lucky. So far. Finally, he espied a deer quite a way away and set off in pursuit. At some point, whether by accident of design, he fired the rifle at random. Didn't get the deer. But a short while later, he stumbles upon a man lying unconscious, probably dead, on the ground, obviously shot and bleeding. Suddenly, it dawns upon our Mr Hunter that he was the one who shot this chap. Full of remorse, he then plans to evade punishment by burying the body. He grabs a shovel and pickaxe from his truck and traipses back to the site. As he is digging, the "corpse" on the ground comes alive again. He was never dead. Now our hero - I use the term advisedly - is overcome with joy. He didn't murder anyone after all. So he stops digging the shallow grave and tries to help the victim, who turns out to be some kind of loner living off grid. For a while they engage in conversation. Maybe at this point, if the hunter had really tried to get the guy to hospital, or at least call for help, the loner could have survived. But instead, they talked for a bit more and all the while the victim was getting weaker and weaker. And then the old guy goes and dies, so back to Plan A, which is to bury the body. Expending considerable effort, the nutcase with the rifle manages to manhandle the body into the grave and cover it over with leaves and brushwood. Then he goes down to a creek to wash off the blood on his hands. As he is doing this he gets some kind of premonition from his wife. And suddenly, the man realises he cannot carry on living with this awful secret that he planned to tell no one about. In the next scene, he is back at the grave, fishing the old guy out again. Again, I wondered: is the old guy going to come alive again? Nope. He is well and truly deceased by now. Finally, we observe the hunter dragging the corpse to his pickup. He then drives it to the local police station and hands himself in. We never get to see the final outcome, as he can barely speak to the duty police officer, let alone describe what has happened. The film ends. Now, we can only surmise what happens next. He will probably be arrested and charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by initially hiding the body. But I don't know whether any charges would stick, as it was obviously an accidental death caused by utter stupidity. He will never forget what happened for as long as he lives, but having, belatedly, done the right thing, society might just forgive him for being such a fool, and he won't need to lie to his wife and kids. The message this movie sends out loud and clear to anyone who thinks he can easily become macho man and get a gun: Just don't, okay! Stick with the day job. Choose a hobby that isn't going to endanger complete strangers. It really made me think of the times I have walked through woods just for the fresh air and heard gunshots far away.

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.

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.

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