One look at Clive Owen’s mustache in the new film “Killer Elite” tells you all you need to know. It hangs horribly unbalanced as he tries to act through it, as uncomfortable for him as it is for us. We cringe as it highlights his jowls and twists his mouth into a dopey sneer. The remarkable thing is that it’s not even the worst mustache in the movie: Dominic Purcell’s handlebars, dripping off his face like gobs of seaweed, ultimately take the prize.

Like the ‘staches, “Killer Elite” imposes nonsense on something that works just fine by itself. A dumb Jason Statham vehicle is all we want, but a retread of “The Expendables” or last fall’s “The Mechanic” isn’t enough for director Gary McKendry. Defying common sense, “Killer Elite” tries to stuff a seventies spy caper into a direct-to-DVD-worthy action movie. Men with seventies mustaches tail each other in old station wagons, look at each other through telescopes, and look at black-and-white pictures of each other in manila folders. Statham probably has a clause in his contract forbidding skinny jeans and mutton chops, but one can dream.

Statham plays an ex-assassin (“I’m done with killing!” “Yeah, well, maybe killing ain’t done with you!”) whose mentor, played by Robert De Niro, gets captured in Oman by an oil sheik. To save him, Statham has to kill some British spies and make their deaths look accidental. He assembles his team and starts hopping back and forth between Europe and Oman, killing the SAS members and bringing evidence to the sheik. Complicating matters is Owen’s mustachioed, ex-MI6 Spike Logan (seriously), who picks up Statham’s trail and tries to protect his colleagues.

There are more threads than expected in the film’s conspiracy, and with a little more effort it might have worked as a B-grade warm-up for the upcoming “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” But it never treats any of its angles as important: different international interests pit the leads against each other, cycling through a haze of double-crosses and dumb motives, none of them worth remembering. And nobody has room to do anything fun with this nonsense: Statham angsts over his faraway girlfriend, Owen repeats things we already know, and De Niro could still be in “Little Fockers” and nobody would know the difference.

Occasionally the movie tries to deliver the goods. The hyped Statham/Owen fights are overcut but enjoyable: there’s lots of glowering, a great nut shot, and some almost-impressive stunts. At one point, Statham says, “The first thing you should buy is a pair of balls!” in reference to some money that somebody has, somewhere. Their last fight takes place in a mannequin workshop, and when you’re terrified of mannequins like I am, they make tense face-offs a lot tenser.

I found these things fun in context, but they’re not worth a movie ticket, a rental, or even a Youtube search. Pick any scene and it’ll give you a headache. “How did we get here?” you’ll think. “Where are we going? I don’t want to know.” The last thirty minutes of “Killer Elite” drag more slowly than Return of the King, lazily crossing off plots and subplots until it’s just Statham, De Niro, and Owen standing in the desert with a box of money nobody really wants. And then they walk away. You might as well see “Abduction” instead.