Ned Rifle

Greetings again from the darkness. The third and final entry to writer/director Hal Hartley's trilogy provides a fitting end to the saga that began in 1997 with Henry Fool, and continued in 2006 with Fay Grim.

I ran across "Ned Rifle" because of the good rating that it had on Rotten Tomatoes (Currently, it is at 77%). I also noticed that it had some really good actors in it (Parker Posey, Aubrey Plaza, Martin Donovan, among others), so I decided to take a chance on it.

What was the point of this film? I was such a big Hal Hartley fan.

For someone who's never been gone.Admittedly, I'd do well to see a few of Hartley's films again — and catch a couple I've missed — but this one hit me as straight-on as nothing of his since 'Simple Men' (one of my three favorite movies ever!

I just now learned this is a follow-up to other films, I think it works perfectly fine on its own. It´s lightning fast, a pure script film.

I probably should have seen the first two in this trilogy first, since there are a lot of plot references to them, but...I didn't, and I probably won't.

Ned Rifle ends the Henry Fool trilogy in classic Hal Hartley style, with damaged people unable to connect or to explain themselves.This was a relief after Fay Grimm, the Henry Fool sequel that occurred during Hartley's dalliance with genre storytelling, something he failed to ever get a handle on.