Keeping the Faith

Keeping the Faith follows two lifelong friends who grew up together on New York's Upper West Side and chose religious vocations: Jake Schram became a rabbi and Brian Finn a Catholic priest. Both are popular and successful in their congregations. Their balance is disturbed when Anna Riley, a friend from their childhood, returns to the city as a corporate executive. Both men fall in love with her, and the renewed friendship turns into a complicated triangle in which their commitments and their faiths leave little room to act on what they feel.

The film is Edward Norton's directorial debut, released in 2000, and the first of the two features he has directed, ahead of Motherless Brooklyn in 2019. Norton also stars as Father Brian Finn, with Ben Stiller as Rabbi Jake Schram and Jenna Elfman as Anna Riley. Anne Bancroft, Eli Wallach and Ron Rifkin appear in supporting roles. Stuart Blumberg wrote the screenplay and produced alongside Norton and Hawk Koch.

Made for a budget of 29 million dollars, the film took about 60 million dollars worldwide, a modest return that made it a viable first outing behind the camera. On IMDb it holds 6.4 out of 10 from roughly 54,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.1 from a much smaller base of 689 votes, a sign of a limited but settled following rather than broad acclaim. A critics' rating of 6.7 from 114 reviews places it slightly above both audience scores.