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Why is it that, with big-budget blockbusters, the producers invariably hire up every H!ITG! in sight, even for the smallest, most inconsequential roles? This gobble-gobble approach was stoked, if not pioneered, by Jerry Bruckheimer, in movies such as Con Air and Armageddon. Soon, the prevailing attitude for Hollywood blockbusters seemed to be, "Hell, if we can get Steve Buscemi/Joe Pantoliano/Dylan Baker to play the psychopath/sniveling reporter/NASA engineer, well then hell, why not?"

And in some sense, getting cast in a throwaway role in a blockbuster is a kind of validation for H!ITG!s (Will Patton, come on down!) as well, no doubt, a nice, effort-free paycheque. Yet there's something shameful about all that frittered talent. If you could somehow siphon off all the wasted wattage in Daredevil, for example, you could light a mid-sized city for a week.

Because Daredevil isn't happy to get any faceless guy to play the throwaway part of the ink-stained reporter, Ben Urich. Oh no. They have to get Joe Pantoliano. And they're not content to get just any for-scale actor to play the three-lines-and-you're-done part of Ambassador Nikolaos Natchios. No, they get Erick Avari, Hollywood's premier Mysterious Man from the Mystic Far East.

(Okay, in Daredevil, he's Greek, not Egyptian or generic Middle Eastern as in most of his films. But you know how Hollywood casting agents are about ethnic character actors. To mangle a cliché, they're all Greeks to them.)

Erick Avari gets all of two minutes of total screen time in Daredevil, mostly spent looking nervous about the unkind end that we all know he's destined to meet. It's enough time, though, for the watchful viewer to think, 'Hey, isn't that...?' and insert a 'Mystic Middle Easterner' role of your choice. "Dr. Terrence Bey" from The Mummy? "Kasuf" from Stargate? "Caravan Leader" from The 13th Warrior? "The Mystic Traveler" from Aladdin on Ice? "Mir Yannick" from Zork: Grand Inquisitor?

He is, of course, all of those people, yet so much more. You may also remember him from such less-mystic roles as "Cecil Anderson" in Mr. Deeds or "Ted Ross" in The Glass House. He also starred in The King and I on Broadway, and once studied under the Indian director Satyajit Ray.

But Erick Avari is just wasted in Daredevil. And we don't mean that in the sense of "Cameron Diaz was just wasted at the MTV Movie Awards." We mean, frittered. Heck, we could have played the part of "Ambassador Nikolaos Natchios," and we can't even say "Ambassador Nikolaos Natchios." Well, not three times fast, anyway.

A tangential note, full of questions: Speaking of Avari's role as "Caravan Leader" in The 13th Warrior, his credit gives us a chance to note something we've long found curious about H!ITG! résumés, as posted on the IMDb. Often, an actor will have one role or another in which they're credited by some slightly different name; in the case, it says "as Eric Avari." Can we assume that this odd crediting is due to bad proofreading by the people who put together the credits for The 13th Warrior? And that the IMDb is then obligated to list this misspelled credit as if it's some alternate credit, because that's how his name appeared onscreen? And not that Erick Avari experimented, for one film only, with the stage name "Eric Avari," but then decided it looked dumb and went back to the regular, correct spelling? Those who have answers, we await.