Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers,” Clayne Crawford plays a middle-class insurance salesman who wakes up, shaves his mustache into something from the Chuck Norris/Burt Reynolds catalog of masculinity, kisses his wife Tess (Jordana Brewster) goodbye and sets out for an early morning hunting expedition.
Say what you will about the Second Amendment, but Joseph Chambers has no business bearing arms, and this trip seems like a recipe for trouble.Writer-director Robert Machoian’s follow-up to “The Killing of Two Lovers” unspools like a stripped-down, one-man “Deliverance”: No group of buddies on a weekend canoe trip.
No dueling banjos. No hillbilly-inflicted sexual humiliation. Just a guy with a rifle in the woods, determined to prove something to the world about his capacity for self-reliance — a capacity that is very much in question with nearly every decision he makes.
Just look at the way Joseph holds a rifle, carelessly pointing it toward the face of the friend who loans it to him. No wonder Tess won’t let him keep a gun at home.
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