Clayne Crawford in The Integrity of Joseph Chambers (Oscar Ignacio Jiménez/Tribeca Festival)

Robert Machoian’s films stand out for their visual and narrative simplicity, often to the point that you don’t realize a bigger story is unfolding. The Integrity of Joseph Chambers might as well be summed up as “man goes hunting, things go wrong,” and it plays that scenario out with almost no detours. Its simplicity proves something of a boon, using extended silence and awkwardness to mediate on the hollowness underneath the idea of gun-toting manliness.

Joseph Chambers is no hunter. Played by Clayne Crawford, who previously starred in Machoian’s The Killing of Two Lovers, he’s merely an insurance salesman adjusting to a new home with his wife, Tess (Jordana Brewster), and their two kids. Now living in the country, he wants to hunt. So, Joseph grooms his facial hair into a Marlboro Man-inspired look and decides to spend the entire day in the woods hunting deer with no assistance, despite his lack of experience, and no desire to wait a week so his neighbor Doug (Carl Kennedy) can take him. Not even Tess provocatively shaking her derriere is enough to deter this foolhardy decision.

It’s obvious from the start that Joseph’s out of his depth. He has no hunting rifle, so he has to borrow Doug’s gun and pickup truck. Attempting to load the firearm’s clip results in an embarrassing spectacle of Joseph fumbling the rounds. When he finally reaches his destination, what follows is a long stretch of him walking, posing with the gun, and sitting in silence waiting for any game to appear. Mind you, that’s all before things go south, reassessing Joseph’s quest to prove his manhood beyond the loaded barrel of a gun.

Just as with The Killing of Two Lovers, The Integrity of Joseph Chambers features Machoian’s trademark static gaze storytelling: single takes, either motionless or tracking shots that linger on Joseph as he traverses the woods, waiting for literally anything to happen next. The more drawn out these situations become, the more noticeably awkward his situation feels. Joseph’s chasing of a vision of masculine self-reliance, when caught through the lens of these isolated camera movements, feels silly, if not needy. His need for some sort of validation creates problems, simply by his ignoring everyone’s wishes. We feel his want, frivolous as it is, as he imagines himself pitching a baseball game, with offscreen cheering crowds, as if he were projecting his ideal audience onto the woods. All this occurs before the unfortunate truth of gun responsibilities kicks Joseph over the head in the worst manner possible.

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers is lean in presentation, operating in semi-real time as it moves from point A to point B with few interruptions. Let alone few characters. Compared to Two Lovers, Machoian has far more big-names attached, like Brewster and Jeffrey Dean Martin as the town sheriff, but they don’t really get much to do in the grand scheme of the plot. They veer closer to glorified cameos than roles.

The “integrity” of the title isn’t a figure of speech. It’s the film’s entire point, to put its protagonist in a situation he cannot brush aside and observe what path he’ll choose. The more the camera lingers on Joseph’s choices, the more uncomfortable his situation becomes. Without spoiling anything, we see him navigate and rationalize every decision, every interaction, and nearly take a route from a conventional “day in the woods gone wrong” script. The outcome, though, may surprise you on a deeply human level.

Joseph Chambers is no hardened gunslinger, but by the end, we have a sense of what kind of real man he is, for better and for worse.