The great character actor Ron Perlman has his best big screen role in many years in “The Baker,” a thoroughly satisfying two-fisted B-movie carved out of classics of the genre and carried on the broad, brooding shoulders of “The Perl.”

I must use the phrase “B-movie” thirty times a month in reviews, rarely disparagingly but often in disappointment. Lots of filmmakers try their hand at straight-no-chaser genre pics, and fail. Let The Perl and director Jonathan Sobol, writers Paolo Mancini and Thomas Michael and their canny producers show you how it’s done.

Keep it simple. There are other films built on the unwilling but tough-as-nails care-giver forced to protect a mob-wanted child. But to do it right, lean on John Cassevettes’ “Gloria,” with Gena Rowlands, and Luc Besson’s “The Professional,” with hit-man Jean Reno keeping tween Natalie Portman safe.

Cast with older character actors with modest quotes, bumping them up to leads. If possible, hire somebody beloved. Perlman, the only “Hellboy” or “Son(s) of Anarchy” that matters, fills that bill.

Hustle up incentive money to film it somewhere unusual. We’re never told the location of “The Baker” and his bakery, but it was filmed in the Cayman Islands.

As The Perl might put it, “Who wouldn’t like a working vacation in the f—–g Cayman Islands?”

The story — a solitary baker tends to his shop, methodically bakes his bread and seems to have few customers to interrupt his solitude. Then his sketchy, estranged son (Joel David Moore of the “Avatar” movies) shows up, out of the blue, takes a call about this “bag” he’s got in his car and abruptly ditches his ever-silent eight-year-old (Emma Ho of TV’s “The Expanse”) with the old man he hardly knows.

“I’ll be back before you guys can form a lasting bond!”

Delphi, the kid, won’t talk. She won’t stop raiding the baked inventory. She steals. She won’t follow instructions. She stares at her unknown grandpa as he does a bit of welding (!?).

“What, you wanna be blind as well as mute?”

He offers her goggles. She keeps them. She’s going to need them.

Because limo-driver dad witnessed a drug smuggling ambush. He’s got the packets they call “pink.” And the guy they belong to (Harvey Keitel) wants them back. His lieutenant (Elias Koteas) wastes no time in finding Delphi’s dad, Pete.

“You know why I’m here?” Pete shakes his head. “And yet, here I am.”

Pete gets to make a call to save himself, but he makes it a warning to Delphi and his father. She can’t eat peanuts. She likes green grapes. She wants a treehouse.

Now grandpa’s got to do what he did before he was a baker to find his kid. He sleuthes, he asks around, he puts it together. And when the need arises, he tells the kid to listen to music through her earbuds and pull those dark goggles over her eyes.

“Some things might happen,” he growls. “Some things you don’t wanna see.”

The script is packed with spare, pithy lines like that. And the movie is all about Perlman, lumbering into a club, an addicts’ shooting gallery, a public bathroom or dry cleaners, wherever bad men can be found.

Vincent Bouillon did the fight choreography and plays to Perlman’s strengths. The brawls are epic and more or less believable in that old-man-of-violence using his muscles and muscle memory to kick ass and leave no witnesses.

Koteas is given interesting shades to bring to his hired killer, a man whose own boss might cause him to have pangs of conscience.

Keitel brings the impatience and the irritation to a hoodlum who focuses on one wrong at a time, determined to get what’s his and get even with those who wronged him.

The kid sells the “cute” in scenes where Delphi tries to share her sundae with this strange grandpa she’s trapped with, her shifty eyes setting the stage for her next act of pilfering or shoplifting. Grandpa spies her stealing the money left for a diner check.

“Lunch is on you,” the old man growls. “I know you’re good for it.”

There’s a little here that I didn’t buy into, but none of that comes from the performances, the tight direction or the hardboiled dialogue. The plot has moments where you can feel an over-reach coming on.

But “The Baker” delivers on all the promise of its premise, all the salesmanship it took to get it cast, financed and filmed in the lovely Caymans.

You want to make a signature, possible break-out B-movie? See or stream the latest from the The Perl and the guy who directed “The Art of the Steal.” Save that film school money. This is how it’s done.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Ron Perlman, Elias Koteas, Emma Ho, Joel David Moore and Harvey Keitel.

Credits: Directed by Jonathan Sobol, scriped by Paolo Mancini and Thomas Michael. A Falling Forward release.

Running time: 1:44