“The Comancheros,” is so studiously wild and woolly it turns out to be good fun.There’s not a moment of seriousness in it, not a detail that isn’t performed with a surge of exaggeration, not a character that is credible.

When John Wayne, a rugged Texas Ranger, picks the gambling Stuart Whitman off a boat in Galveston and takes him five days inland pursuant to returning him to Louisiana on a murder charge, the illogic of it is established, coolly and casually. And when Mr. Whitman has occasion to clout Mr. Wayne on the head with a spade, he does so with such violence that, if it were serious, the film would be over, then and there.

So it goes. Separated by expedience, brought together again by chance, these two roughnecks bang their way across Texas in a whirlwind of hyperboles. They play cut-throat poker in Sweetwater, where Mr. Wayne puts a couple of deadly slugs into a scalping-scarred, booze-sogged Lee Marvin, who gets so noisy he just has to be shot. In another place, Mr. Whitman is absolved of the murder charge by Circuit Judge Edgar Buchanan, who has an amiable way with the law.”Ain’t no way to do this legal and honest,” Mr. Buchanan says, “So, being good, sensible Texans, we gonna do it illegal and dishonest. Case dismissed.”Indians are knocked off with a vengeance that could only be achieved through a careful collaboration of a wild director and stunt men with rubber for skin. Houses are burned, booze is guzzled and finally the two roughnecks arrive in the secret stronghold of the Comancheros, a band of white renegades, back in the hills.

Here again seriousness and credibility are cheerfully tossed to the winds. You might think the Comancheros were sybarites at Montego Bay. Top Comanchero Nehemiah Persoff is an elegantly cultivated gent. His ward, Ina Balin, is a beauty right out of a finishing school. Fine wine and drunken Indians adorn their dining room. The Texas Rangers arrive to save our heroes just in the nick of time.Sure, it is foolish and childish, meaningless and absurd, designed for no other evident purpose than to agitate and amuse. But, at least, it doesn’t have the gross pretensions of such as “The Alamo.” Making it, under the direction of Michael Curtiz, must have been back-breaking fun.