Frank Miller

The nominal director, Robert Rodriguez, does very little to the film other than facilitate it; the honorary directorial credit he gave to Miller (without which we would maybe not have Miller's putrid 2008 film of The Spirit , a film that blindly copies Sin City's aesthetic with an incomparably worst script and performances) admits as much, and the fact that the one scene "guest-directed" by Quentin Tarantino is indistinguishable from the rest of the film other than having a slightly looser performance from Benicio Del Toro speaks to how little personality the movie actually possesses that it didn't borrow from Miller.

But we’ve gotten past the idea that movies are merely comics that move, and we’ve gotten past the notion that even a comics master like Frank Miller -- whose work was the basis of the films 300 and Sin City -- must automatically be a great filmmaker.

Miller, a comic book writer and artist himself, who created “Sin City” and co-directed the film version of it, has made a mess of “The Spirit.”

While the role of Manute went to Michael Clarke Duncan (“The Green Mile”) in 2005, the surprising choice of Dennis Haysbert – yes, the Allstate guy! – seriously pays off this time around.

Sarah Paulson (2008's " The Spirit ") is quite good in her own right as elder sister Lucy, her relationship with her sister a war between true empathetic concern and bitter contempt, while John Hawkes (2010's " Winter's Bone ") is memorably assured and slimy as insincere, opportunistic cult leader Patrick.

It's an entertaining, even touching film, but the fictional Jamie's underhanded sales practices are used for laughs over outrage and his chief rival, Eli Lilly's Prozac king Trey (Gabriel Macht, "The Spirit," "Whiteout"), is equally romantic rival as business.

The colorful supporting cast includes Christopher Meloni (2014's " Sin City: A Dame to Kill For ") as Roger, an American ally searching for adventure with nothing to lose; Ike Barinholtz (2015's " Sisters ") as Emily's agoraphobic older brother Jeffrey; and Wanda Sykes (2016's " Bad Moms ") and Joan Cusack (2015's " The End of the Tour "), deliciously amusing as sleuth-ready vacationing duo Ruth and Barb.Effectively gritty if not one-hundred percent racially sensitive, "Snatched" pays no mind to political correctness but also rarely takes itself too seriously.

It fits into a long line of visually audacious Hollywood gambles: In success you wind up with a sleeper that few see coming, like “300” (or, if you strike the bull’s-eye, a phenomenon like “Avatar”), but the ones that miss — “The Spirit,” “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” “Sucker Punch” — tend to tank hard.