Showing from Feb. 8: Parker ***

Stars: Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis.
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona.
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Liberty Theatre. Fri-Sat 9.30pm, Sun 6.30pm; Mon-Wed 8.30pm.
Runtime: 118 minutes
Action, crime, thriller

Thank the action-movie gods because we needed a little something to wake us from our winter slumber.

Based on a novel in a series by Richard Stark, the alter ego of the late, great Donald E. Westlake, the film is basically a heist-and-payback movie. But it’s made with such skill and smarts that it stands above such eye-rolling blow-’em-up fare as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Stand, its main competition at the box office.

As played by the ever-stoic Jason Statham (the Transporter and Expendables films), Parker is more antihero than hero: He operates on the wrong side of the law, but he’s got a complicated code of ethics.

He will steal — and steal quite unremorsefully — but only from people who can afford it, he says. If you stumble into one of the many crimes he commits, he won’t hurt you as long as you do exactly what he tells you to do. He doesn’t go looking to hurt innocents. But all bets are off if you don’t follow directions, and woe unto anyone who dares to cheat him.

A double-cross is precisely what happens in the opening scenes of Parker and the rest of the movie follows what happens when Parker decides to get his revenge on the guys who left him for dead.

Statham, not always the most charismatic of actors, turns out to be a good choice. He looks like the sort of guy who stands a good chance of getting out of any tight corner, even if his assailant is armed and he’s not.