Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

gavin6942 Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros.The film's production is almost as interesting as the film itself. Heck, maybe even more so. Paul Wellman's novel had been bought for the screen by George Stevens who wanted to direct it after "Giant" (1956). However, he then became interested in making "The Diary of Anne Frank" and sold the film rights to Fox for $300,000.Clair Huffaker ("Seven Ways from Sundown") was signed by the studio to adapt it for producer Charles Brackett with Gary Cooper to star. However, Cooper was in ill health and in early 1961 Douglas Heyes was announced as writer and director. John Wayne and Charlton Heston were announced as stars, but Heston dropped out and was replaced by Tom Tryon, then Heyes dropped out and was replaced by Michael Curtiz. Fox had the script rewritten by Wayne's regular writer James Edward Grant ("Angel and the Ban"). Because of Wayne's involvement, Paul Regret (who was the lead in the novel) was played down and Wayne's part had to be amplified.Ultimately, this is very much a John Wayne film. His preferred writer, him starring, and even him directing at some points when Michael Curtiz was too ill to come to set. There are many things about John Wayne as a person that are despicable, but as a Hollywood personality he is among the biggest.

SnoopyStyle It's 1843. In New Orleans, gambler Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman) is in a pistol duo over allegations of cheating. He kills the other guy who turns out to be a son of a judge. He becomes a wanted man. Texas Ranger Jake Cutter (John Wayne) captures the fugitive intent on returning him to Louisiana. While Cutter is burying friends killed by Comanche, Regret escapes. The Comancheros are renegades headed by a former Confederate officer who smuggle guns to the Comanche Indians. Cutter tries to infiltrate by befriending gunrunner Tully Crow (Lee Marvin). He ends up killing Crow in a card game but he recaptures Regret.The story is a mess of anachronisms. This is simply cowboy (Texas Rangers) and Indians. It's a lot of shoot em up action. John Wayne is John Wayne. There are stunts galore. It doesn't make it a good story but this is old fashion action western.

Ed-Shullivan I have watched The Comancheros at least once every decade since it was initially released in 1961 and my most recent viewing was on the upgraded Blu Ray version with the special features section including a narrative by various historians familiar with the mid to late 1800's in the Texas/Mexico lands once ruled by the Comanche Indian. For those reviewers who choose to pointlessly pick apart this film from an historical point of view I suggest they be reminded that this film is a WESTERN genre and not a documentary. So if the writer/producer/director took some liberties with the type of rifles being hocked BETWEEN the Comancheros and Comanche's and WITH the time line I really didn't mind. What I enjoyed about this film is everything, especially the panoramic view of the wide open western wilderness.First of all it has John Wayne in the lead role as a Texas Ranger Captain Jake Cutter, who goes undercover in an attempt to find the hideout of the Comancheros who were trading guns to the Comanches for wealth ten times the guns worth. There is a young (31) and dashing Stuart Whitman in the role of a gambler and ladies man Monsieur Paul Regret who is wanted for murdering a judges son in a gentlemen's pistol duel over a woman. It becomes Jake Cutter's (John Wayne) objective to bring Monsieur Paul Regret in to be hanged for this so called murder. Of course Paul Regret has a Comachero love interest in Pilar Graile, played very confidently as a liberalized woman of the west by the attractive actress Ina Balin.There are a number of stellar performances by some great stars such as Lee Marvin's performance as gunrunner Tully Crow, Nehemiah Persoff as the leader of the Comancheros , Michael Ansara, Edgar Buchanan as the shady Circuit Court Judge, Jack Elam, Bruce Cabot, and John Wayne's son Patrick Wayne playing the adventurous 18 year old Tobe.I love watching a great western and most of John Wayne's performances give his audience their money's worth. The Comancheros is no exception. I give it a 7 out of 10 rating.

Bill Slocum Watching "The Comancheros" is a lot easier than trying to make sense of it.Okay, so there's this gang of bad guys in the Old West, whites and Mexicans who form a secret colony from which they help renegade Comanches attack isolated ranches and steal cattle. Only Texas Ranger John Wayne can stop them, but he keeps getting sidetracked by the clever Louisiana gambler he's bent on getting hung. Fortunately, he's armed not only with anachronistic weapons but the fact the Comancheros' preferred form of attack involves riding around heavily-armed adversaries over and over until they get shot off their mounts.It's pretty silly stuff even before it works its way to a cringe-worthy slipshod ending, but in the meantime you are having fun, especially if you are a John Wayne fan, watching his Big Jake character growl and deliver the kind of comebacks you wish you could pull off in the heat of the moment."You killed him?"Seemed like the thing to do at the time."How d'ya know you killed him?"Wasn't time not to."You're all fools!"Well, it's fun sometimes.Duke's right; this is foolish stuff, but still fun most of the way. Wayne has a terrific cast working under him, led by Stuart Whitman as the gambler Regret, playing the angles while working our sympathies. Nehemiah Persoff is the Comancheros' cagey, somehow respectable leader; Guinn Williams is a gunrunner who with hilarious ineptitude tries to demonstrate how rehabilitated he's become after a couple of hours in a cell; and Lee Marvin is even more dangerous and drunk than usual, not to mention funnier than he ever was in "Cat Ballou."There's also a goodly amount of tension, much of it set around various unstable partnerships, dances of distrust and mistrust that define this film. Big Jake and Regret have a lot of stuff to work out, even beyond the fact Regret doesn't quite go along with Big Jake's plans for hanging him. Big Jake, working undercover, teams up with the evil Lee Marvin character for a while, who rightly doesn't trust Jake but can't quite catch him out. Whitman gets involved with a beautiful, mysterious woman (Ina Balin), who may reciprocate his feelings or just want a few hours' amusement before hanging him up like a butchered steer. And so on.Balin's fine, too - for the first half of the film. Then the script goes wobbly and she goes from fiery and independent to dumb as a post, forcing you to focus on the actress's lovely cleavage instead of her lines. It's not the worst trade-off, but it still leaves you wishing James Edward Grant, Wayne's usual scribe at the time working here with Clair Huffaker, had avoided his usual tendency for lazy endings. With just a little work, this could have up there with Wayne's best.Michael Curtiz called it a career here, a fitting swansong for one of Hollywood's greatest action-film directors ever. "Comancheros" gets the blood going anyway, and showcases the stars, two things that made Curtiz Curtiz. I have a feeling the horses didn't miss him, but this time at least the many wild falls seem to have been non-lethal.Overall, this is a solid crowd-pleaser with more than its share of memorable highlights to long after you forget the weaker moments. I just wish they weren't there.