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But Statham, unlike most action-pulp icons, is a genuine actor, with a darting intelligence and finesse. He has often been much better than the movies he’s in, and he has flirted with the A-list as well. It’s seriously doubtful that an action star pushing 50 would be considered for the role of James Bond, but it would be fascinating to see what Statham could do with it.

The closest he has probably come is the character of Arthur Bishop, assassin for hire, whose signature is that he kills and makes it all look like an accident; it’s his way of leaving no traces. Five years ago, in “The Mechanic,” Bishop trained a new protégé (played by Ben Foster), but the movie, loosely based on a 1972 Charles Bronson film, was ludicrous — a series of overwrought daredevil stunts and situations. It was too much over-the-top action, with not enough (borderline) plausibility.

“Mechanic: Resurrection” is the movie “The Mechanic” should have been — a bite-sized Bond film, or maybe a grittier homicidal knockoff of the “Mission: Impossible” series, with a lone-wolf renegade as the entire team. Bishop, living undercover in Brazil, is hunted down by his boyhood frenemy, Craine (Sam Hazeldine), who orders him to perform three kills. He has no desire to do any of them, but Craine holds a trump card: Gina (Jessica Alba), whom Bishop has rescued and fallen for. He thought he was finished with murder-for-hire, but now he has to kill for love.

It’s part of the film’s compact efficiency that in scene after scene, Bishop carries off in about 20 minutes what Tom Cruise and company would spend an entire hour to plan. There’s a downside to that: In a great M:I adventure, like Brad Bird’s hypnotically intense “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” the stakes were high, and when Cruise slithered around on the tallest skyscraper in Dubai, the effect was pure heart-in-the-throat, hands-clawing-the-seat poetic vertigo.