Kept in a special school run on devout Christian lines, at age 18 Ned is free to leave. His mission in life is to find and kill his rogue father Henry. On visiting his mother Fay, who is serving a life sentence for terrorism, she cannot tell him her husband's whereabouts and suggests he contacts her brother Simon, who is a writer in New York. Also anxious to see Simon is a penniless postgraduate called Susan, who wants to write about his work. Learning that his father was last heard of working in Seattle, Ned rushes off to the airport. Susan follows him, because she has her own reasons for wanting to find Henry, and Ned reluctantly teams up with her, though he keeps refusing a romance with her. In Seattle, he learns that his father has lost his mind and is being kept in a special clinic. In fact, Henry shams madness in order to enjoy a quiet life among good books. Ned abducts his willing father, planning to shoot him in open country, but discovers that Susan has found his revolver and removed its ammunition. She then makes off with Ned's father, money and gun. Reaching a motel near Spokane, she reveals that she was the 13-year-old girl whose parents burst in just as she had lured Henry to her bed. For that, he got seven years. Now they can carry on legally and their night of passion disturbs the whole motel. Ned meanwhile has traced the pair and in the morning is waiting outside for them to emerge. Susan, having completed her unfinished business with Henry, shoots him dead. Ned bursts in, and in a struggle with Susan accidentally knifes her to death. Outside, armed police are waiting for him.
While promoting Fay Grim in 2007, writer/director Hal Hartley mentioned the possibility for a third Henry Fool film, hinting that Aiken's character Ned would be the story's focus. In May 2013, Fortissimo Films acquired the global sales rights for the film at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Gemma Arterton was reportedly attached to star. On November 6, 2013, Hartley launched a fundraising campaign to produce the film through Kickstarter, seeking a total of $384,000 and offering various incentives to those who donated $1 or more. Liam Aiken, Parker Posey, James Urbaniak, and Thomas Jay Ryan, as well as some crew members, appeared in several videos promoting the campaign. On November 25, Hartley added a $9,000 reward tier offering the film's distribution rights for seven years in the United States and other countries, notably the first Kickstarter to propose offering film distribution rights. Subsequently, Kickstarter notified Hartley that selling distribution rights is a form of investment, which is forbidden by Kickstarter's terms and conditions, and Hartley removed the option. The Kickstarter campaign ended on December 4, with 1,789 donors raising $395,292. In March 2014, Hartley scouted locations in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, as well as locations could double for parts of Washington State. On March 13, it was announced that Aubrey Plaza joined the cast and that a fall release date was planned.
Filming
began in early April 2014, shooting in locations including Queens and the SUNY Purchase campus. Filming wrapped on April 26.
Release
A teaser for Ned Rifle was released on July 22, 2014. The film premiered on September 7, 2014 at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. It was also screened in the Panorama section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival on February 6, 2015. The film's US debut premiered at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 13, 2015 and was available for viewing on demand on Hartley's official website beginning on April 1, 2015. The film was released in a limited release on the same day.
Critical reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 78% based on 32 reviews, and an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ned Rifle serves as a satisfying conclusion to Hal Hartley's "Henry Fool" trilogy - and one of the strongest late-period works from a distinguished filmography." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
