Burning Bridges Review: A Double Dose of Raymond Wells and 1920s Chaos

If you have an afternoon to kill and a soft spot for 1920s westerns where the plot relies entirely on people not being able to tell two guys apart, Burning Bridges is worth a look. It’s definitely for the crowd that enjoys those old-school 'wrongly accused' stories, but if you need a movie to actually make sense every second, you’ll probably hate how often characters just believe the first lie they hear.

Raymond Wells plays both Bob and Jim Whitely, and you can tell he’s having a much better time playing the 'unhinged' brother. Bob is an army vet with shell shock who escapes a sanitarium, which the movie handles with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

The train holdup scene is actually pretty decent for the era. There is this one shot where the steam from the engine completely swallows the screen for a second, and it feels accidental but looks cool.

Jim gets arrested because, well, he looks just like the guy who robbed the train. It is the oldest trick in the book, yet the movie treats it like a shocking twist every single time it happens.

Then we get the sheriff, played by William Bailey. This guy is a piece of work. He doesn’t just let Jim take the fall for the train; he decides to pin a whole murder on him too.

The murder victim is Tommy Wilkins, who just happens to be the brother of Jim’s fiancée. Talk about bad luck. It’s one of those moments where the movie starts to feel like a soap opera that accidentally wandered onto a ranch.

I noticed a weird thing with the hats in this movie. Every time someone gets into a fight, their hat stays perfectly perched on their head like it’s glued there. Except for one scene where Jim is escaping jail, and his hat falls off—he actually pauses for a split second like he’s considering picking it up before running.

Kathleen Collins, playing the fiancée, has to do a lot of heavy lifting with her eyes. She spends half the movie looking like she’s about to cry or faint, which I guess was the standard 'devastated woman' vibe back then.

There is a scene where Jim is trying to find Bob in the woods that goes on way too long. They keep cutting back to the same bush, and you start to wonder if the cameraman just liked that specific plant.

It reminds me a bit of the pacing in The Pursuing Vengeance, where the middle section feels like everyone is just waiting for the finale to start. But here, the stakes feel slightly higher because the sheriff is just so smarmy.

The 'shell shock' stuff with Bob is handled in a way that feels very dated, obviously. He mostly just stares into space and clutches his head whenever a loud noise happens.

It’s a bit like the over-the-top acting you see in All Wrong, but without the intentional comedy. Wells is trying his best, but playing two people at once in 1928 was a tall order for any actor.

I liked the jailbreak sequence though. It’s fast and messy, and the way Jim just bolts out of there feels more realistic than the usual choreographed action.

One thing that bothered me was how easily the fiancée believed Jim was a killer. I mean, they’re engaged! You’d think she would give him at least five minutes to explain before deciding he murdered her brother.

The scenery is mostly just dirt and rocks, but it fits the mood. It’s a very brown movie, even for a black and white film, if that makes any sense at all.

The ending comes at you fast. Like, one minute they’re all arguing and the next, everything is wrapped up with a neat little bow.

It doesn't have the weird charm of Felix in Love, but it’s got a grit that keeps it from being boring. Even when the plot is doing circles, you kind of want to see the sheriff get what’s coming to him.

If you’ve seen a lot of these silent era westerns, you’ll recognize the tropes from a mile away. But there is something about the way Jim desperately tries to clear his name that feels honest.

Is it a masterpiece? No way. But it’s a solid example of a B-movie from a time when movies were still figuring out how to tell complicated stories.

I still can't get over the sheriff’s mustache. It’s so perfectly groomed for a guy who lives in a dusty outpost and spends his time killing people. He must spend a lot of money on wax.

Anyway, give it a watch if you like seeing brothers ruin each other's lives. It’s a decent way to spend an hour, even if you forget most of it by dinner time.