Rating: NR | Runtime: 96 minutes
Release Date: February 17th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Gravitas Ventures
Director(s): Robert Machoian
Writer(s): Robert Machoian

Hell is coming to breakfast.

Why Joe (Clayne Crawford) has chosen those words to be his mantra while readying to go deer hunting for the first time alone is unclear. It’s obviously not something he says often. His wife Tess (Jordana Brewster) wouldn’t mock him out for the sheer absurdity of the statement (“Is Hell the place coming?”) if it were.

Joe is simply trying to pump himself up—hoping the more he tells himself he’s a capital-M Man, the more he’ll buy the lie that it’s true. He needs this now that the fear of a world imploding has broken his city-mouse insurance salesman down to the basest desire with which our patriarchal society has indoctrinated young boys from coast to coast. Do you have what it takes to protect your family?

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers reunites the embattled Crawford with writer/director Robert Machoian after 2021’s The Killing of Two Lovers. If it weren’t for four pending titles on the actor’s IMDb page, I’d wonder if this relationship was all that remained of his career post-“Lethal Weapon” ouster.

It really is a shame that so many celebrities wind-up showing their true selves to be unworthy of pity let alone their own talent because Crawford is very good here in what amounts to a figurative one-man show. From the moment he leaves home until a final scene introduction of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, it’s just Joe in the wilderness. All his bluster, anxieties, stupidity, and hubris.

So much so that Machoian can have fun with the sound design to put us inside the character’s head. Because it’s one thing to laugh as he drops bullets and fails to secure the clip to his borrowed rifle. It’s another to watch long takes of his ineptitude conclude with piped-in applause when he somehow achieves a goal as small as finding the tree stand on his friend’s property and climbing up to settle in for a long day of waiting … and sleeping.

Between these comic gestures for the audience and the inevitable voices that soon haunt his every waking minute, the point of the narrative comes through crystal clear: accept your limitations. That’s not to say you shouldn’t expand upon them, but do so intelligently and without fear taking the wheel.

The title ultimately teases what’s to come since fate can’t test Joe’s integrity by allowing him to shoot himself (although it often appears he will). No. He’s going to shoot something else and the consequences of that act will push him to the edge of morality for self-preservation. While Crawford and Machoian do effectively mine the emotional and psychological toll such tragedy demands, the long takes can get tiresome.

I get the desire to showcase performance and highlight Joe’s internal tug-of-war, but redundancy does set in. Thankfully, that repetition serves an authentic series of mistakes and second thoughts leading to what one can only be described as catatonic shock. Because what’s more believable than that? No words or excuses can justify preventable violence by the hands of a stubbornly naive pretender.

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Clayne Crawford in THE INTEGRITY OF JOSEPH CHAMBERS; courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.