Maybe the reason professional assassination organizations are always having so many troubles and double-crosses is that hitmen and the people who hire them are kind of dicks.

The job just calls for a certain type of person, the same way being a movie critic calls for a person with impeccable integrity, the soul of a poet, and biceps that burst like BP pipelines. Wait, too old. Make that biceps that burst like New Orleans levees. Anyway, the guys who run murder-for-hire operations should probably look into this occupational hazard with their actuaries. Maybe they could get Inevitable Betrayal coverage. Then maybe it won't cost me a quarter million damn dollars to say hello to my trumpet-playing neighbor.

The antisocial nature of a hitman's job is probably why movies featuring them as protagonists strain so hard to make them likable. "Why, he doesn't kill women or children! One more miracle and we've got ourselves a saint."

The Mechanic doesn't go that far, but despite its overall competence, it doesn't bring much that's new, either.

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

Jason Statham is an extremely professional assassin, capable of making the toughest hits look like accidents. But his mentor, Donald Sutherland, has sold out the company they work for. The bosses want Statham to take him out.

Sutherland's death brings his screw-up son Ben Foster back to town. Foster knows what Statham does and wants to learn. But Foster's hits are messy and obvious -- and Statham's bosses won't stand for it much longer.

Which means, you know, mercenary death squads all running in like "BRRT BRRRRT" with their machine guns that look like they were manufactured by William Gibson. Good actiony grit has Statham two steps ahead of his enemies, which is the perfect position to roundhouse them from. Sometimes, I fear Statham won't be able to make many more movies about killing everyone in sight, as natural selection will soon eliminate the subset of humans interested in messing with him.

But The Mechanic has more on its mind than blood and things that go boom. Co-written by Richard Wenk and Lewis John Carlino (who also wrote the 1972 version), it provides a great role for Foster as a violently angry son unwittingly working with the man who killed his father.

As an actor, Foster is like sprinkles on pastry, or leashes on children: his presence makes everything better. He's got what they call "intensity," which is critic code for "I do not want to be locked in a small room with this man because I fear being eaten alive." As usual, he puts that intensity to good use. Most bloody thrillers are like a roller coaster, exciting but constrained to safe rails. Foster's part and performance often suggests we're about to fly off the track.

But despite all the chances The Mechanic has to careen into dangerous places, it never really does. Its subtler, more dramatic conflicts aren't handled any more interestingly than the flashy conflicts of one guy with a gun against some other guys with more guns.

I'm not gonna say that makes it crummy. I'll take mediocre genre work over mediocre Oscar-bait dramas seven days of the week. That's all the days of the week. So you can see I am serious.

Mediocre isn't the right word for The Mechanic, either. Director Simon West keeps up a quick pace, delivers terse action, and keeps us on board with Statham and his violent profession without obvious manipulation.

For me, that became a problem: every time the movie approaches an interesting moral ledge, it backs right off

Grade: B-