A chewy comeback role is the ultimate gift to an accomplished actor who never quite caught fire or who got older while producers and studio execs kept getting younger.

Think of what Tarantino did for Travolta, Pam Grier or Robert Forster, what “Stranger Things” meant for Winona Ryder or “The Whale” managed for Brendan Fraser.

Steven Soderbergh had just transitioned from “indie” cinema icon (“sex, lies and videotape”) to mainstream hit-maker (“Out of Sight”) as a director when he brought “The Limey” (1999) to life at boutique distributor Artisan.

A simple, bluff and brutal thriller without a lot of mystery to it became the star vehicle Terence Stamp never really had in his ’60s debut years, when “The Collector” and “Modesty Blaise” might have made him, but didn’t.

Stamp, who passed away this week at 87, passed on “Alfie,” which made his former roommate Michael Caine a superstar. He was supposedly considered a replacement for Sean Connery as James Bond.

But what never happened back then came to him with the career-extending showcase that was “The Limey,” making him a Cockney ex-con bashing and shooting his way through Los Angeles in search of answers about his daughter’s death.

Soderbergh, working from a Lem Dobbs (“Dark City,” “The Score”) script, had a tale about a “villain” as the Brits like to call him who got his start in the ’60s. Who better to renew our acquaintance with London in the ’60s than Stamp?

Stamp was one of the famous faces of ‘Swinging London.” He dated Julie Christie and other starlets of the day. His younger brother, Chris Stamp, managed mod-era rockers The Who, who earn a needle-drop (“The Seeker”) in “The Limey.”

Stamp, with that fixed, blue-eyed stare that could suggest menace or masked despair, would be our fish-out-of-water proxy, a man of violence out for revenge in a city where money and power insulated the powerful from accountability.

And he’d be our introduction to the already-faded world and rhyming, coded slang of Cockney.

“I’m gonna ‘ave a butcher around,” Wilson, his character says, puzzling any Angelino who hears him. “Butcher’s hook,” he explains. “‘Look’ around.”

Luiz Guzman, getting one of his biggest breaks, plays Eduardo, the ex-con who befriended Jennifer, the daughter who died, supposedly in a car crash, and who wrote to Wilson back in Britain about her death.

“He’s my new china,” Wilson says by way of introducing “Ed” to others. Another puzzled look. “China plate. Mate.”

Wilson and his “new china” will use any name Ed can come up with to get Wilson closer to Terry Valentine, Jennifer’s much older record-producer boyfriend. The slick, oily and 60something Valentine is played by Peter Fonda, fresh off “Ulee’s Gold” and leaning into his own “comeback.”

Wilson gets in over his head, busted up by the first thugs he meets. But they let him live, which turns out to be a mistake.

He chats up LA voice coach Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren) who knew Jennifer and who provides us a peek at show biz back in the day. And before we know it, our Limey has shown up at Valentine’s designer hilltop mansion for a party and given some thought to how he’s going to kill this guy whom he’s sure had everything to do with Jennifer’s death.

But prison taught our Cockney to “make a choice” about what actions to take, to realize “when it matters, and when it doesn’t.”

There’ll be no public execution of the tanned, imperious Valentine in public. Oh no. That’d be too easy, “china.”

Every performance pops in this actor’s showcase, with Soderbergh giving dishy parts to Barry Newman (“Vanishing Point”) as Valentine’s ruthless “security” overseer, Nicky Katt as a lowlife hired to kill Wilson and Amelia Heinle as Valentine’s new “Jennifer,” his latest young beauty/arm candy.

The film’s most playful scene captures the owlish inscrutability of actor/director Bill Duke (“Predator”) at his best, here as a DEA agent who balefully stares down Wilson, who is both getting mixed up in an ongoing investigation, and a possible source of rough justice to criminals Duke’s DEA man might not be able to lock up.

But what really stands out about this film in renewing one’s acquaintance with it is the tour de force editing Soderbergh and editor Sarah Flack brought to it.

It’s not just the clever integration of scenes from Stamp’s performance in Ken Loach’s ’60s debut film, “Poor Cow” (co-starring Carol White) to illustrate Wilson’s youth and his early relationship with daughter Jennifer’s mother.

Soderbergh has Flack create montages from the past, and the future. Wilson doesn’t just flash back. He flashes forward, considering his options, how this or that revenge scheme might play out.

The framing device for the story is our Man from the UK on a plane. But is he coming or going as he considers everything that happens or might happen in his quest?

“The Limey” produced several Independent Spirit Awards nominations, but no Oscars. Considering the performances, the directing and the editing, that seems almost criminal.

But it did wonders for almost everybody involved. Soderbergh would go straight from this to “Erin Brockovich,” the “Oceans” movies and star director status, something he still eschews.

Guzman would take a higher profile as a character actor with range, and Fonda would enjoy a decade back in the spotlight.

And all of a sudden, everybody remembered that Stamp — whose rediscovery really began with the cult hit “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” — had been and remained a talent to be reckoned with.

He’d go on to grace hits like “Bowfinger,” “The Phantom Menace” and “The Haunted Mansion,” share his looming screen presence in “Valkyrie,” “Yes Man,” “Big Eyes” and “Wanted” all the way through “Last Night in Soho,” a final nod to his place in “Swinging ’60s” London and his final film.

But if you’re looking for the showcase that gave him his best role and perhaps most enduring and performance, go back to “The Limey.” It’s the classic that he should be remembered for.

Rating: R, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, Luiz Guzman, Barry Newman, Bill Duke, Amelia Heinle, Nicky Katt, Melissa George and Lesley Anne Warren.

Credits: Directed by Steven Soderbergh, scripted by Lem Dobbs. An Artisan release on Tubi, Plex, Amazon Prime, etc.

Running time: 1:29