Seemingly everyone here, viewer included, is on a Fool's errand in trying to pin down the ever-fugitive Henry... which makes this most elusive of characters a perfect figure for a trilogy whose own significance is difficult to capture.

Hartley is at his Hartleyest here, meaning, among other things, that a fair chunk of the dialogue sounds like a pronouncement, aimed as much at the viewer as it is at another character.

At its worst, "Ned Rifle" is a self-involved movie about self-involved people. When it clicks, though, we're in a pared-down moral universe that carries unsettling echoes of our own.

Ned Rifle finds a comfortable place between Henry Fool's low-key sensibilities and Fay Grim's conspiratorial plotting.