Robert Machoian presented himself as a new interesting name on the American independent scene with the quality previous film “The Killing of Two Lovers”, and “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” confirmed that status. This drama premiered in Tribeca, and once again Machoian set the action in one of the passive parts of America, this time in Alabama. He once again assigned the main role to Clayne Crawford who is the titular anti-hero, Joseph Joe Chambers who will find himself in the center of a huge moral dilemma and will try to do what is right.
In the previous film, Crawford was a long-haired, bearded guy from rural America who decided to shoot a woman and her lover. Now he has cut his hair, shaved his beard and grown a solo mustache, I guess to better fit into the society of rural Alabama where he got married and decided to create a life. As everyone there is a hunter, so Joseph also wants to prove himself, so one morning he decided to go hunting by himself. Although his wife Tess (Jordana Brewster) warns him not to prove himself to anyone, to stay in bed for a while longer, Joseph does his best to show himself as a guy capable of taking care of his family even according to those rural, almost survivalist rules.
He is convinced that killing a deer on his own while hunting will introduce him to society, regardless of the fact that he obviously makes a solid living as an insurance salesman and takes care of his family quite correctly. She doesn’t want her Joseph to turn into a part of the local “End of the World Fox News” team whose most important thing is that they know how to manage when a new civil war or apocalypse comes, but he is persistent. He wants to prove himself and show himself, although it is clear to us from the beginning that he is not only not a hunter, but he has neither a rifle, nor a car, nor equipment. But he has the will, and it looks like he’s lucky, because after some time and looking around the forest, he will see a trophy deer, the shooting of which could lead him to a pedestal among the local white-trash hillbillies for whom such a thing is the meaning of life.
But instead of a deer, Joseph will shoot something else and will soon find himself in a big moral dilemma. He will begin to be haunted by the thought of what quratz drove him to the forest in the first place and what he needed it for. As Dafoe’s Jesus on the cross in Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”, he will think about the versions of his future life if he acts in one way or another, and what the film’s title refers to, his integrity, will come to the fore. And although once again Machoian made a relatively simple film in which we only have a few characters in one location, it is again an interesting and cleverly designed drama about right and wrong life decisions.