“You know, it’s time to rethink Javier Bardem”: That was a friend’s impressed if somewhat begrudging conclusion after we attended a preview of “The Good Boss.” Like many public figures, Mr. Bardem has become ubiquitous to the point of being taken for granted. What has he been up to? 

Mr. Bardem was, of course, nominated for an Academy Award this year for his turn as Desi Arnaz in Amazon’s biography of Lucille Ball, and he won as Best Supporting Actor in 2008 for “No Country for Old Men,” in which he played one of the screen’s most terrifying psychopaths, Anton Chigurh. Now Mr. Bardem is starring in “The Good Boss” with a performance so deft and cunning that if it doesn’t earn him a gold statuette come next March, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may need to take down its shingle and call it a day.

Hyperbole? Not a bit. The protagonist of “The Good Boss,” Julio Blanco, is as memorable a figure as Anton Chigurh, and a lot more credible — if only because the states of mind he traverses are more varied and grounded. Granted, director and screenwriter Fernando León de Aranoa had his tongue firmly in cheek when contriving the film. This is, after all, a picture in which goodness is in short supply. All the same, he’s brought us a character that turns out to be remarkably varied in its shading.

Funny, too. Messrs. León de Aranoa and Bardem have worked together before, though the erstwhile auteur insists he didn’t write the script with the actor in mind. Their previous collaborations, “Mondays in the Sun” and “Loving Pablo,” were dramas, and though “The Good Boss” is fairly dark in tenor, it is, in fact, a sneaky and sometimes uproarious comedy.  Few of us would have thought of Mr. Bardem as a go-to for such a venture. Clearly, Mr. León de Aranoa knew something the rest of us didn’t.

Mr. Bardem plays the owner of Basculas Blanco, a family-run business that specializes in manufacturing scales. Striding through the factory with a confident swagger, he greets the employees with a bonhomie that is carefully cultivated and sternly applied. “Don’t treat me like a boss” is the mantra, a company line the workers dutifully applaud and that Blanco almost believes himself.

Big things are afoot at the company, not least an upcoming visit from a governmental committee set to bestow an important award on a local business. There are, however, flies in the ointment. A recently laid-off employee (Óscar de la Fuente) has set up camp directly outside the factory and engages in an around-the-clock protest of the company’s business practices. Blanco’s childhood friend and longtime aide Miralles (a bedraggled Manolo Solo) begins to fumble at his duties. Then there’s Liliana (Almudena Amor), the long-legged intern who catches the boss’s eye….

Fob “The Good Boss” off as another satire on corporate mores, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Truth to tell, there are moments when Mr. León de Aranoa treads in the same footsteps as his countryman Luis García Berlanga, a filmmaker whose satirical takes on society and politics are notable primarily for a congenital case of the cutes. Too much time, for instance, is spent with Roman (Fernando Albizu), the guard at the front gate who is a stickler for poetic assonance and a buffoon too broad by half.

On the whole, though, Mr. León de Arano keeps his wits about him, and they are barbed. He’s aided by a splendid cast: Sonia Almarcha as Blanco’s long-suffering wife is particularly wry, and Celso Bugallo brings the necessary gravitas to his role as a much put-upon jack-of-all-trades.

All the while, Mr. Bardem summons impressive reservoirs of emotion, intelligence, and puzzlement, often within the span of a single take. That, and he’s the best kind of actor — one who knows when enough is just right and too much is even better.