Keep Your Distance (2005) Gil Bellows, Jennifer Westfeldt, Christian Kane, Kim Raver, Jamie Harrold, Elizabeth Peña, Stacy Keach Movie Review

Keep Your Distance (2005)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Gil Bellows in Keep Your Distance (2005)

Tangled Web = Tangled Mess

David Dailey (Gil Bellows - A Bear Named Winnie) leads a decent enough life; he is a popular radio show host and he has a good marriage to Susan (Kim Raver). Or so he thought as after receiving a mysterious envelope with a hotel door key in it he goes to the room to find Susan in bed making love to another woman. After getting arrested for drunk driving he has no one he can call other than a stranger called Melody (Jennifer Westfeldt - Friends with Kids) who earlier that day he helped when she was nearly run over. Melody has some of her own issues as just before meeting David she turned down a very public proposal from Sean Voight (Christian Kane) in front of his exceptionally powerful father, Brooks (Stacy Keach). With David the recipient of more mysterious messages whilst also dealing with his assistant wanting to usurp him at the radio station he finds himself spending more and more time with Melody who still has Sean trying to win her over. It leads to them both beginning to suspect they are being stalked with David fearing that not only is some one is trying to bring him down but that they are going to succeed.

I really don't like writing long synopses; I always prefer to give just a gist of what a movie is about so that I don't spoil it for the audience. But when it comes to "Keep Your Distance" I had no choice but to give more detail than I would like as without mentioning some of the details all I could say is a popular radio show host finds his life crumbling around him as he receives a series of strange notes. And on paper "Keep Your Distance" sounds like this intriguing thriller with plenty of characters with their own stories to create a real tangled web of mystery with events leading to David becoming increasingly paranoid over what is going on.

Jennifer Westfeldt in Keep Your Distance (2005)

Unfortunately whilst on paper "Keep Your Distance" sounds like an intriguing thriller it doesn't manifest itself on screen for the simple reason it tries to pack too much in to such a short time. In essence the movie is all about who is targeting David and why would they want to destroy his life but because it is throwing so many subplots and characters at you that it is hard to keep track of what is what. It also leads to you not warming to any of the characters enough to make you care what happens to them. And whilst I won't tell you how this tangled web eventually plays out I will say it is a disappointment considering how many elements the story has.

What this all boils down to is that "Keep Your Distance" is a movie with a lot of characters, a lot of sub plots and a lot of nice ideas. What it doesn't have is a lot of time and cramming all this into one movie ends up not just creating a tangled web but also a tangled mess.


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