So Hal Hartley missed the day at film school where they taught how to write realistic dialog. You can either get past this or you can't. Me, personally, I love the stilted, akward, hilarious Hartley patter.
Fay Grim picks up a few year's after Hartley's Henry Fool. What if Henry's 7 volume Confessions wasn't actually a book of risible poetry, but a secret code. What if Henry wasn't a pathetic misanthrope, but a pathetic misanthrope ex-CIA operative on the run from ever intelligence agency in the world?
The movie is mostly hilarious, but loses the plot about two thirds of the way through when the sympathetic Osama Bin Laden character shows up. (You can go back and read that again, let it sink in, I'll wait here). I mean, on the one hand, why is it ok to laugh at these John Le Carre parodies of grizzled CIA men, telling tales of instigating bloody third-world rebellions for abstract political gains but not those on the other side, but on the other hand, I'm sitting in this theater on the anniversary of Sept 11, 2001 listening to this terrorist appolegia, and having a hard time taking it.
Still I recommend it.