After the raunchy brilliance of “The Hangover” in 2009 came the inevitable sequel two years later, which, like most second comings, was a major letdown. The cast and crew essentially aped the first movie, with our maturity-challenged “Wolfpack” of 40-ish dudes waking up after a night of debauchery and attempting to reconstruct events of which they had no memory.

It had its moments, but the novel premise was no longer fresh and the jokes just didn’t hit like the first time around.

“The Hangover Part III” falls somewhere in the middle of the two, funny enough to recommend but lacking the frisson of the original. It also abandons the flashback storytelling gimmick of the first two films, opting for a straight-ahead narrative. Instead of creating new mischief while on a bender, they’re soberly dealing with the consequences of their previous (mis)adventures.

That’s all well and good, and it was probably the right move to make the third (and, by all accounts, final) movie stand out from the rest. But I feel compelled to point out that we’re watching a movie with “Hangover” in the title during which no one experiences a hangover.

Until, that is … well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say, I highly advise you to keep your fanny parked in your seat when the credits roll.

Zach Galifianakis, who made such an oddball sidekick in the first movie, is now pretty much the center of the show. As delusionally obtuse man-boy Alan, Galifianakis has created an enduring comic character, a man who is somehow innocent and yet repulsive at the same time.

Alan is the sort of guy who can meet a woman (a nice cameo by Melissa McCarthy) seemingly as mucked up as he is, initiate the beginnings of a romance and then pull down his pants, coyly informing her that he “saw it in a pornography” — and yet still come across as dimly sweet.

All the other characters pretty much react to what Alan’s doing, including smoother operator-turned minivan-driving schlep Phil (Bradley Cooper) and uptight dentist Stu (Ed Helms). Alan even seems to command our attention when he shares the screen with Leslie Chow — the certifiably insane, cocaine-snorting, generic Asian accent-spouting, wild-partying criminal played by Ken Jeong.

Spoiler alert: I can confirm that Jeong’s penis returns for a third outing … if you’re patient.

The set-up is the guys are driving Alan, who’s depressed and off his meds after his father’s death, to a detox center in Arizona when they’re kidnapped by a homicidal gangster named Marshall (John Goodman). It seems Chow stole $21 million in gold bars from him with the Wolfpack’s unwitting help, so he wants them to get it back for him. As insurance, Marshall kidnaps their friend Doug, once again giving Justin Bartha a reason to disappear for most of the movie (which is probably just as well).

The rest of the flick plays out as a series of chases and double-crosses, as the guys quickly track down Chow but have difficulty keeping their hands on him. Alan, who had secretly been exchanging letters and emails with Chow while he was in a Bangkok prison, incorrectly sees it as rescuing Chow rather than capturing him.

There are a few clever bits, including a neat reversal at a Mexican villa, and, of course, the action ends up in Las Vegas, the beginning of all their troubles.

There are no celebrity appearances a la Mike Tyson like last time around, though the hijinks are intermittently funny and occasionally hilarious.

“The Hangover Part III” pales in comparison to the first film, but it feels less cynical and rote than the middle one. It’s a fun outing, with enough laughs to remind us why we liked the first movie so much.

3.5 Yaps

Back in 2009, I took a swipe at director Justin Lin’s straight-faced insistence on the deep interconnectedness of characters in the “Fast & Furious” world. Reuniting Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez must’ve have been real hard with all those “Pacifier,” “Timeline” and “S.W.A.T.” sequels beckoning.

The self-serious fourth film in question is still the franchise’s only slow car in the right lane. But after “Fast Five” and “Furious 6” (the actual title of perhaps the greatest-ever senary installment of a non-rebooted film series), well, I’ll healthily admit I was flat-out wrong about what Lin had up his sleeve.

Yes, it’s still a franchise about fast cars, but their drivers rarely race simply to sate their need for speed any longer. The physics may be impossible, but the oft-verbalized family dynamic isn’t. That’s because Lin and Chris Morgan (who have been the screenwriter/director duo since 2006’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”) have interwoven so many integral players into the last two chapters that it feels earned, fragile and high-stakes.

Through tenacity and conviction of now four “Fast & Furious” movies, Lin has become a sought-after alchemist of whoop-whoop escapist action. That’s because, like his Taiwanese-filmmaker forebear Ang Lee, Lin treats action seriously, like ballet, with a youthful reverence for spectacle. He’s junked the low-rent aftermarket CGI of the first films and replaced it with a practical-action approach ala a classic-car enthusiast.

Seriously, did you see “Fast Five”? Just when the series was about to tach out, up rolled that badass behemoth to rebuild the franchise into “Brocean’s Eleven.” Though it lacked the finely etched characters in Danny Ocean’s crew, “Fast Five” turned out to be 2011’s best straight-ahead action film. And “Furious 6” just may stake the same claim for 2013.

Its grand finale will undoubtedly be on the short list to beat this year — a bonkers cars-versus-plane cocktail chased with the mad-crazy rush of four simultaneous fistfights about which you legitimately care. Lin said it took four years to map out, and his meticulous detail yields maximum excitement.

“Furious 6” elevates the series into saga territory — an automotive “Avengers” as suffused with sincerity as it is bereft of pretenses.

After splitting their shares of a $100 million heist, the quick-driving crew cobbled together by criminal-cum-hero Dominic Toretto (Diesel) has scattered to the wind. Dom and his lover, Elena (Elsa Pataky), have absconded to non-extradition territory. Joining them are Brian O’Conner (Walker), the one-time cop who befriended Dom instead of booking him, and Mia (Brewster), Dom’s sister and Brian’s baby mama.

It’s paradise, but there’s palpable unease on Diesel’s sourpuss face. To him, it feels less like easy street, more like expatriation — a self-imposed sentence separating him from the streets with which he’s truly familiar. Diesel isn’t good per se, but he sells Dom’s weariness well enough, and even particleboard Paul Walker delivers some subtle, nuanced work during an unexpectedly dangerous plot twist.

Meanwhile, loudmouth Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Brian’s childhood friend, is tapped out but still trying to roll high in Macao. Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Roman and Brian’s buddy, is robbing ATMs to give to the poor in Costa Rica. And Dom’s romantically linked pals Han (Sung Kang) and Gisele (Gal Gadot) run races in Hong Kong. (Save for the soundtrack, Don Omar and Tego Calderon sit this one out.)

Although he could take them all down for their sundry stateside crimes, G-man Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) has more or less taken a live-and-let-live approach. After all, Dom and Brian saved his bacon during a favela firefight last time out.

But Hobbs cashes in on that favor when confronted with the vehicular-warfare terrorism of Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). A former British paramilitary man, Shaw is a rebel without a cause other than creating anarchy for the highest possible bidder. Evans’ continued employment to date can best be chalked up to looking like Orlando Bloom’s brother. Here, Evans lends a cold, cunning ruthlessness to Shaw’s personal vendettas, which hit a lot harder than any world-endangering plot.

The movie’s MacGuffin is that Shaw seeks a chip to build Nightshade, a techno-bomb that could take down a nation’s military grid. But what motivates Dom and company to mount up again is the reappearance of Letty (Rodriguez) — Dom’s longtime girlfriend, presumed dead in a drug sting for which Brian bears responsibility, who now rides with Shaw.

It’s here that a bit of egregious retconning creeps into “Furious 6.” But at least Rodriguez and Diesel play their eventual reunion more like kinship than courtship at first, and there are the faintest hints of amnesiac noir.

If that seems like a too-chunky plot summary, know it takes up maybe one-tenth of the fleetest 130 minutes you’ll ever spend with a big, dumb grin on your face. It’s because Lin brilliantly conducts a crescendo of chaotic, first-class action setpieces.

The first is a fluid, tense chase through London’s tunnels, roundabouts and bridges. The second involves Shaw’s sociopathic spree down a Spanish interstate, in which his commandeered tank treats sedans like a trash compactor would soup cans. And then there’s that aforementioned battle-royale finale, which puts an auto shop-class spin on an earlier “Moby Dick” reference.

Thrown in for good measure is a handful of fistfights featuring new characters, seemingly cast solely for their raw physicality. This is not a complaint.

As Hobbs’ new partner, MMA refugee Gina Carano combines buxom beauty and unbridled lethality as she did in the overlooked “Haywire.” Joe Taslim ports over pencak silat from “The Raid: Redemption” as one of Hobbs’ crew, and as Hobbs’ main muscle, Kim Kold, a Danish bodybuilder topping 300 pounds, makes The Rock look like an action figure.

If anything detracts from the giddy high of “Furious 6,” it’s the moldy conceit about the villain who wants to be caught. But even that moment unexpectedly raises stakes for one character’s scruples and silently, powerfully connects to a memory from a previous adventure.

Unfortunately, “Furious 6” is Lin’s swan song with the franchise. But he’s certainly laid unabashedly glorious groundwork from which to move forward. (A seventh film is already in the works for next summer.) And if Lin leaves a trail of fumes in his wake, at least it’s the sweet, nostril-filling tang of gasoline — unwise to inhale too often, but damn sure worth a good whiff every couple of years.

(A word of caution on that planned sequel: Avoid the Internet Movie Database, which gives away a credit-cookie cameo introducing a new, palpable threat that, frankly, suggests a welcome change of pace for the performer issuing it.)

“Only Lovers Left Alive”

Not exactly a purely British-funded film, but it’s the only entry from the UK up for the Palme d’Or award at Cannes 2013 and director Jim Jarmusch’s picture makes its debut at the festival.

British actors Tom Hiddleston (“Thor”) and Tilda Swinton (“Burn After Reading”) are lovers Adam and Eve, who have been in a relationship for a long time. A very long, long time. The film is an exploration of the effects of immortality on their relationship and its various trials and tribulations.

Expect a romantic and emotionally involving vamp film closer to “Let the Right One In” rather than “Twilight” which is, well, tween rubbish.

“The Selfish Giant”

Clio Barnard will be showcasing her second film that follows on from her acclaimed 2010 feature, “The Arbor.” Inspired by an Oscar Wilde story, “The Selfish Giant” follows Arbor and Swifty, two boy chums excluded from school who collect metal scrap for a local scrap dealer named Kitten (Sean Gelder). Arbor becomes jealous when Kitten picks Swifty as the jockey for dangerous horse-and-cart drag racing —a scene of terrific black comedy that plays a lot like a nightmare.

“For Those in Peril”

The Scottish version of “Life of Pi” follows the story of young Aaron (George Mackay), the lone survivor of a fishing boat accident that took the lives of five men from the his small village.

He returns to find a superstitious community turned against him for being the lone survivor. Written and directed by Paul Wright, “Peril” is a debut feature that explores the pain of survivor’s guilt, managing to wind in the magic of the superstition felt by the locals.

Lynne Ramsay

Decidedly an auteur because of the writer-director-producer credits on nearly all her features, Ramsay is now sitting on this year’s Cannes jury picking the Palme d’Or award with Team Captain Spielberg and director Ang Lee, to name two.

She returns after 15 years, when she first appeared at Cannes in the late 1990s with her graduate short film, “Small Deaths,” which won the Prix du Jury award. Her “Kill the Day,” another short, and “Gasman” also won prizes that same year.

Ramsey’s projects always come from an emotional place and, usually with limited dialogue, serve to move the audience with imagery and music. She’s known as the poetic director. A true artiste with artistic temperaments, she was a no show on “Jane Got a Gun” on the first day of filming earlier this year. However, this has done little damage to her image.

There have always been gaps between each project for the Scottish director. Each film for her appears all-consuming and each takes a lot of energy to make. She’s also known as a very slow writer. Due to the intensely creative nature of her work, Ramsay has been put forward by critics as being the next Ken Loach.

There was a near 10-year gap between “Morvern Callar” (2002) and her next feature. Ramsay was all set to make the film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” having seen a draft of the novel when it was only half-finished.

Unfortunately, the book’s bestseller status upon publication meant that a bigger director was required, and Peter Jackson stepped in (making a mess of the story according to critics and fans of Sebold’s book). Certainly, it was a true grim fest, leaving the viewer decidedly depressed afterwards.

Ramsay eventually returned with 2011′s highly tense, psychological film “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” It delves deep into the mother-son relationship and the ideas of nature vs. nurture, following the son’s mass murder of his fellow school pupils. Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly star as mum and dad with Ezra Miller as Kevin.

“Kevin” shares similar themes with “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) and “The Omen” (1976) that delve into how the unfortunate parents deal with their evil offspring.

Ramsay’s tense thriller never shows what happened on the day of the event but focuses instead on the aftermath and tries to explain the son’s murderous behaviour through the mother’s understanding of it.

My favorite part of “The Last Stand” is the very end. After over-the-hill sheriff Ray Owens has fought off a small horde of Mexican gangsters invading his dusty border town, he rests on the sidewalk, bloodied and beat. He struggles to get to his feet, and a younger man offers a hand. Ray glares at that outstretched hand, peeved that it is seen as necessary. Then he gives up and accepts the help.

At 65, Arnold Schwarzenegger no longer resembles a superhero, just a tough old-timer with a few tricks left. After giving up superstardom for politics, Arnie attempted a comeback with this throwback action thriller. Audiences stayed away, perhaps because of recent revelations about his personal life.

Judged solely on its merits, “The Last Stand” is an effective if unoriginal action flick. It takes a while to get rolling, but after the 45-minute mark it’s an enjoyable orgy of gunfire and explosions.

The set-up is that a Mexican drug cartel kingpin (Eduardo Noriega) has escaped from federal custody and is zooming toward the border in a super-charged Corvette prototype. With the help of an elaborately planned escape, he’s gotten away clean, and only Sheriff Owens and a small passel of misfit deputies stands between him and freedom.

Johnny Knoxville is a hoot as a local gun-loving coot, while Luis Guzman is Ray’s overly cautious right-hand man. Rodrigo is the very recently deputized town drunk – and ex-Marine – while Jamie Alexander rounds out the cast as the lone, able female cop.

Korean director Jee-woon Kim knows how to stage action scenes so they’re exciting while still remaining grounded in the laws of physics.

And Schwarzenegger has a comfortable, easy grace playing a regular guy who becomes a reluctant hero. The box office receipts may disagree, but the Austrian Oak still has action-star bona fides.

Both the Blu-ray and DVD versions come with a decent amount of goodies. There’s a making-of documentary short and three other featurettes focusing on various aspects of production, plus a handful of deleted and alternate scenes.

Film: 3.5 Yaps
Extras: 3.5 Yaps

The fifth installment picks up right where Season 4 left off, finding Tara accidentally shot by Sookie and lying dead on the kitchen floor. In order to avoid losing Tara forever, Sookie and Lafayette hesitantly decide to have Pam turn her into a vampire. The results are less than optimal, as Tara would rather be dead than, well, undead. She eventually takes up a bartending job at Fangtasia and cuts ties with her cousin and Sookie.

Meanwhile, Bill and Eric have been held captive by the AVL, who accuse them of being Sanguinistas, a faction of vampires who believe in a literal interpretation of the “Vampire Bible” and are opposed to the AVL’s attempt at mainstreaming. Of course, these accusations are false, and Bill and Eric are forced to do the AVL’s bidding amid planning their escape. Upon learning of the possible escape of Russell Edgington, the AVL commissions Bill and Eric to track him down and bring him back to their underground bunker.

As to be expected, the retrieval of Russell serves as the turning point of the season, as the Authority Chancellors turn on their leader and claim to be secret Sanguinistas who worship an ancient vampire goddess simply named Lilith. Bill is brainwashed by the de facto group, as the reformed AVL turns into a glorified terrorist group with the intention of feeding on humans.

In order to do so, the group blows up a series of True Blood factories in order to force the hand of vampires worldwide into feeding straight from the source. Eric and his sister, Nora, are visited by the ghost of their maker, Godric, who implores them to reject the Sanguinista way of life for it will be the death of their species. The siblings plan a revolt, but Bill is seemingly past the point of no return.

Meanwhile, Sookie is embracing her magical powers with the help of a rogue group of fellow fairies. She and Jason find themselves on the hunt for their parent’s killer, whom they know little to nothing about, a subplot of which goes nowhere by season’s end. Jason has a heartfelt goodbye with his best friend, Hoyt, who is glamoured by Jessica in order to forget that she slept with Jason. Hoyt thusly moves to Alaska in pursuit of a brand new start.

The various other subplots are of varying intrigue. There’s a right-wing group of rednecks donning Obama masks, roaming Bon Temps and killing vampires and shifters, who arrive at a miraculously mundane ending. Alcide finds himself reunited with his estranged father after getting kicked out of his pack, the leader of which is a “V”-addicted halfwit.

However, the most bizarre storyline of the past season is that of Terry Bellefleur and the Iraqi fire demon. Through a series of flashbacks, it’s revealed that Terry and his Army buddies in Iraq fired upon innocent civilians, one of which has cursed Terry and the rest of the men in the company to death by a fiery supernatural demon. Indeed, it’s just another Manic Monday in Bon Temps.

Season 3 marked a significant dropoff for the series with too many extracurricular characters being thrown into the mix. However, with Season 5, it’s as if “True Blood” has hit a stride once again. The whole AVL vs Sanguinistas plot manages to bring together a majority of the characters’ motivations, particularly Bill and Eric, who are bonded in the experience. Sookie has almost become a secondary character at this point, being relegated to fairy subplots and faux heroine motifs. With Anna Paquin soon to be on maternity leave, it would appear her role as Sookie will be even more greatly reduced come Season 6 this summer.

As far as the Blu-ray release of season 5, the box set is top notch, as to be expected from an HBO product. Included in the extras is a less-obnoxious “pop up video” feature for each episode equipped with fun facts, trivia and insight into each scene. There is also a feature entitled “True Blood Lines,” which acts as a family tree including each and every character, divided into species and categorized by the bloodlines they share with one another. Finally, there is an “Authority Confessionals” bit featuring each Chancellor revealing stories into a single-use camera ala a reality show confessional booth. Albeit somewhat corny, the amount of detail put into the bonus disc is truly impressive.

Onwards and upwards to Season 6 this summer.

Season: 3.5 Yaps
Extras: 5 Yaps

If there’s a greater actor in a better role than Paul Newman in “The Verdict,” I haven’t met it.

This 1982 legal drama directed by Sidney Lumet is one of my cinematic touchstones, a film that grabbed me at an early age and profoundly affected the way I approached movies. It still retains a strong hold on me and I think about it often, even though I doubt I’ve seen it more than a total of three times.

Watching it as a precocious preteen bedazzled by Jedis and replicants, “The Verdict” opened me up to a universe of serious films where the characters didn’t do much more than talk. It’s an incredibly spare film, lacking big showy moments, and with barely any music to push or pull the audience into easy emotional catharsis.

Even Frank Galvin’s courtroom speeches are rambling and unfocused — he comes across less as an attorney presenting a compelling legal argument than a stumblebum hanging out on the corner lamenting the woes of the world to no one in particular. It’s hardly the fiery “you’re out of order!” brimstone you usually see.

To call Frank down on his luck would be to presume that he ever had any.

When we first meet him, Lumet and screenwriter David Mamet (on just his second screenplay) go out of their way to depict him as a lowlife ambulance-chaser. He plays pinball with grim concentration, taking a breakfast of a beer with a raw egg cracked into it before heading out on his daily rounds. This mostly consists of following the funeral notices in the paper for potential cases. He bribes the morticians to introduce him to the bereaved family as an old friend so he can slip them his card and drum up a wrongful death lawsuit.

We learn he’s only handled four cases over the last three years, all of them out-of-court settlements, and that Frank had a brush with the law, nearly losing his law license for jury tampering a decade ago. Since then, he’s been riding the downward spiral, with retired lawyer friend Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) throwing him a case from time to time and peeling him off his office floor when Frank’s been on one of his benders.

The latest is a good one, a real “money-maker,” Mickey promises. But Frank can’t even remember the case when Mickey brings it up, 10 days before trial. He pulls himself together enough to meet with the clients, the sister and brother-in-law (Roxanne Hart and James Handy) of a woman who fell into a coma after going to the hospital to give birth and being given the wrong anesthetic. (Interestingly, the film never mentions what happened to the baby.)

The hospital is owned by the Archdiocese of Boston, and the calculating-but-not-uncaring Bishop (Edward Binns) offers Frank a $210,000 settlement. For his standard one-third fee, that would garner him a neat $70,000 (about $170k in today’s dollars) — enough to keep Frank flush in cheap cigarettes and breath spray for years. But he refuses, and insists on taking the case to trial.

Why? Part of the film’s greatness is never definitely answering this question. Clearly Frank is deeply impacted when he visits the woman in the hospital, curled up in a permanent fetal position, and takes Polaroid photos of her. Lumet cleverly doesn’t allow his camera to show her from the same angles as Frank’s pictures, which bring her sad plight into focus — for us and for him.

His clients don’t want to go to trial. They make clear they’re looking to recover $50,000, which is the amount a local facility wants as an endowment to take over perpetual care of the woman. The sister and brother-in-law want to move out west and wash their hands of the burden. So why does Frank turn down the settlement, nearly coming to blows with the sister’s husband when he finds out?

From a legal standpoint, his case is a mess. He only has the testimony of one over-the-hill country doctor (Joe Seneca), who turns out to be black to top things off. It’s funny and sad to think about how just three decades ago, having an African-American doctor as your star witness was seen as undermining the case.

Of course, Frank stumbles into luck with a last-minute witness, an admitting nurse who was bullied into changing the medical form to cover up the doctor’s mistake (played by Lindsay Crouse, employing a full-on Boston blarney accent). He does so in part by breaking into a post office box to get an uncooperative woman’s phone records.

Frank sees this as his last shot for … well, not greatness, but at least legitimacy. After he wins this case, the final scene of him reposing in his office, refusing to answer a phone call he knows he oughtn’t to, suggests Frank will resume practicing the law with something like resolve. He’ll probably keep boozing, and handling lowlife cases, but he’ll be an attorney again.

About that phone call. Charlotte Rampling plays Laura, a divorced woman who takes Frank up like a lost child off the street and becomes his lover/confessor, bucking him up when things look bad. Certainly it’s not because a burned-out 55-year-old drunk has any business nabbing her interest. Even his initial come-on lacks embellishment: “My God, you are some beautiful woman.”

Secretly, she’s being paid off by Frank’s opposing counsel, Ed Concannon (James Mason, in pure aristocratic arrogance mode), to feed him information. When Frank finds out, he belts her … hard.

I’d like to talk about that punch. It was the thing I most remembered from seeing the movie, when Mr. Movie Star Paul Newman punches out a willowy-looking woman. There’s a long, silent pause before he does so, as they look at each other. Wordlessly, the look of betrayal on his face is reflected in her own, as she realizes the gravity of what she’s done.

The look on Newman’s face is just classic. It’s the expression of a beat-down dog who’s just had his last bone taken away from him, and he’s finally riled up and mad. He’s ready to fight. Frank has lost everything — his status, his wife, his friends — and here is this woman gnawing away the last tatters of his dignity.

Violence against women is repugnant, but in the film’s context it feels totally justified.

Aside from Newman, the performances are roundly solid. Rampling has a certain reserved, damaged quality; we later learn she used to be a lawyer herself and is looking to get back in the game. Concannon is the real twisted soul, taking a case he could easily win and putting a couple of fingers on the scales of justice. I wonder if it ever occurred to Concannon that he is engaging in the sort of activity that nearly cost Frank his law license.

Warden is his usual blowsy, hard-talking presence. Seneca has a quiet dignity as a man who earns most of his livelihood testifying against other doctors in court. He acknowledges his vocation but fervently affirms the validity of it. Wesley Addy also has a small, subtle role as the accused doctor.

Milo O’Shea, who recently passed, is just terrific as Judge Hoyle, who handles Frank like a wayward student hawking spitballs in the back of his classroom. In his heart of hearts, he’d rather just see Frank thrown out in the the wilderness, but he does his duty anyway. Not without prejudice, however; it’s quite clear that the judge favors the defendant and works to undermine Frank’s case.

However, when the surprise witness has just undermined Concannon’s case, he and the judge have this great exchange of stares where O’Shea peers out from beneath those marvelous caterpillar eyebrows with a look that says, “You’re on your own, me bucko.”

That’s one of the things that dazzled me when I recently watched “The Verdict” again — how it makes every big moment bigger by going smaller. In its lean, small, often wordless and soundless way, “The Verdict” is a piece of true greatness.

5 Yaps

Even by star Jason Statham’s usual modest-risk, modest-reward standards, “Parker” is lazy, lousy stuff after a bracing first half-hour — the sort of tripe on which you would have found a Cannon logo circa 1986 and which would have starred Charles Bronson or Michael Dudikoff.

Based on a book by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake’s pen name), it’s the revenge tale of a double-crossed thief riddled with bullets and left to rot on the roadside. Sound like “Point Blank” (1967) or “Payback”? It’s more or less the same (only worse), as all three were adopted from Stark novels. Only this film, to which the rights were released after Westlake’s death, uses the character’s actual name. Too bad it lacks either their nasty streak or their creative misanthropy.

Based only on his silver-screen exploits, Parker is a piss-poor judge of character, especially given the honorable code of which he so proudly boasts to anyone who will listen. Here, he’s duped after a bravura million-dollar robbery of the Ohio State Fair — from which his nasty partner-in-crime Mellander (Michael Chiklis) intends to stake an eight-figure jewelry heist in Florida.

But you can’t solve a problem like Parker with one bullet, as Mellander’s crew learns when he turns up on their tails days later in Palm Beach. To arrive there, Parker gets a hand from his girlfriend’s dad, played by Nick Nolte, who, pro forma, stammers like a man talking to himself on the subway and looks like a walking slab of brisket.

“Parker” is only good when it moves fast enough so as not to let us muse on myriad, monumental plot inconsistencies. Chief among them: Mellander is pulling off the Florida robbery at the behest of a Chicago mob boss. Why didn’t he stake his minions the cash they needed for a healthy 4900% ROI? Unfortunately, the film takes a fatal, humorless interlude into insouciance once Parker arrives in the Sunshine State, with only one unexpectedly bloody fight to break up the monotony.

Posing as a Texas millionaire named Daniel Parmitt (for whom Statham tenders one of the decade’s most ludicrous accents), Parker finds where Mellander and Co. are holed up. Pulled into his plot unexpectedly is Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), a real estate agent floundering in the land of the filthy rich. In exchange for a cut of his final take, Leslie offers her “knowledge of the area,” but she may have romantic designs, too.

In her initial appearance, Lopez awakes dazed and confused, as if hoping she’s actually on the “Out of Sight” set, back before the “Wedding Planners,” “Back-Up Plans” and “Maid in Manhattans” led her to whatever remains of her film career. With a dead-eyed resignation, Lopez plays Leslie like one of her romcom characters in a film where people are filleted like Palm Beach’s catch of the day. And pairing her as a potential paramour for Statham is just one of “Parker’s” many perilous decisions, as it creates a non-starter love triangle with the smallest angle possible.

The only interesting moments between them involve butts, and not in the way you might think for a film featuring Lopez. Yes, Leslie strips down to her skivvies and Parker sneaks a peek. But he’s scanning for a wire she might have hidden in a panty-covered cleft — a man looking to sate his trust, not his lust. In fact, it’s Leslie that objectifies Parker, checking out his keister in rumpled suit pants.

To call “Parker” a run-of-the-mill thriller insults the pleasures, however predictable they might be, of the proficient process behind the potboilers it’s trying to emulate. “Parker” feels like the product of misfits who broke into a mill shuttered on the edge of town and fired up the machines without understanding at all how they work.

Although there’s not much worth watching or hearing, “Parker” at least looks and sounds great on Blu-ray. It’s got faithful, vivacious color reproduction, from the red and green balloons floating around the fair to the stucco castles of Palm Beach. And whether it’s a roaring shotgun or humming locusts, the sound is rich and involving.

Extras include a commentary with director Taylor Hackford (“Ray”), during which there’s presumably no apology, and a repetitive series of promotional featurettes.

There’s an old Romulan proverb that says there are two types of people in the world: “Star Trek” fans, and non-“Star Trek” fans.

I fall into the former category, and that particular bias will undoubtedly color my review of “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the sequel to J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot of the “Trek” franchise. Forgive me for doing so, but I admit I am utterly incapable of separating that part of my being from viewing the film objectively.

I will say this, as an unabashed lover of Abrams’ first film, warts and all. It had the single greatest sequence in “Trek” movie history, which only included one of the main characters in a tertiary role, and had the spirit of cowboy gusto that frankly had been missing from the franchise since … well, William Shatner’s five-year mission ended prematurely in 1969.

“Into Darkness” isn’t as good as that first picture, but it recaptures some of that bottled lightning nonetheless and takes a few pretty bold risks along the way, continuing to both distance and connect itself to the original series through its somewhat innovative decision to spin this series off as an alternate reality.

The details of “STID’s” plot is something too good to spoil here. The film’s villain is John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), though that’s not his real name. Who he really is I won’t divulge, but will only say he is someone familiar to fans of the original series. Harrison is a terrorist of sorts who launches an attack against London, then attacks Starfleet Headquarters.

Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), on the other hand, finds himself in hot water, stripped of his captaincy and demoted for what is sure to be merely his first violation of Starfleet’s Prime Directive, which is to not interfere in the natural course of a civilization’s evolution.

From there, things progress to the extent that the villains and heroes are established and do the things they do. There are thrilling, innovative action sequences, emotional interplay between characters (and a still somewhat-contentious relationship between Kirk and Spock), and enough surprises to keep you guessing (and believing) that anything can happen.

Pine and company continue to faithfully uphold Gene Roddenberry’s legacy for the most part, at least providing very good recreations of the characters, from Zachary Quinto’s wonderful twist on Spock to Simon Pegg’s pitch-perfect Scotty. Even Anton Yelchin breaks out his spectacular fake Russian accent again to great effect.

Pine, though, is perhaps at his best here, bringing an added layer of purpose and a rather shaky morality to Kirk. His youth both serves and betrays him, and he again stares down the proverbial lose-lose situation and comes up with another unique solution.

The film’s endgame could have used a little more tweaking, as the ship-to-ship dogfight leaves a little to be desired. But it ramps up into another “Trek” movie staple: the climactic fistfight, which is well done and ramps up the tension.

What Abrams has done so well with “Trek” is turn the series on its head while keeping it close to the source-material vest. In the first film, he dared to destroy Vulcan, one of the more important planets in the Federation in original “Trek” lore; here he…ha…good try. You almost got me to give away something. Let’s just say he takes established characters and turns our expectations upside down.

He also finds innovative ways to freshen up what had often become another stodgy “Trek” chestnut by creating new interactions with the ship. During battles, we don’t just get the usual camera shaking, console sparks and flying redshirts; here we get something of an homage to “Titanic,” as Kirk and Scotty (and the rest of the crew) hang on as the Enterprise pitches out of control, gravity lost and the ship plummeting toward a planet.

I do have nits to pick. First: Abrams gives Starfleet Navy-type hats to wear, which creates a thematic vibe but is not true to Roddenberry’s original vision (plus they’re dumb-looking). There are a few too many “the transporter can’t do this” moments that ring hollow and false, and there’s at least one moment where the Enterprise should easily have been spotted by enemy combatants but inexplicably isn’t. Scotty/Spock Prime’s “Trans-Warp beaming” comes back into play, and it’s a device that, if Abrams and writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurzman and Damon Lindelof aren’t careful, can create some unseemly plot holes.

Shrug all you want; we “Trek” fans are finicky, and we aren’t changing for J.J. Abrams or anyone else.

Overall, “Into Darkness” is neither a disappointing nor a surprisingly satisfying film. It’s rock-solid summer entertainment, a good film with a solid sense both of what it is and what it is not. Overall, I enjoyed the first film in the series more, but this one acquits itself well enough that I can say it’s a “Trek” well worth taking.

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