Nothing in “Shelter” develops beyond the suggestion of an idea. A sleepy vehicle for action star Jason Statham, “Shelter” piles on cliches and expects viewers to supply enough goodwill to compensate for its shortcomings. You might want to suspend your disbelief, especially if you’ve acquired a taste for generic star vehicles with all of the threadbare integrity of a Michael Winner/Charles Bronson collaboration. But “Shelter” doesn’t really do anything so well that you can’t also get from a number of other programmers like it.

The filmmakers stumble through the motions of yet another cookie-cutter fugitive-spy story with an innocent-kid twist. Statham does what he can, as fans might expect, but he plays a stick figure who would likely seem unbelievable if Daniel Day-Lewis took the part.

Statham plays Michael Mason, a hermit living on a small Scottish island who typically only sees two people in his day-to-day life. Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and her uncle (Michael Schaeffer) provide Michael with supplies, riding out on choppy seas and leaving Michael’s goods outside on his doorstep. Jessie, like Michael, isn’t much of a character. But to push the plot along, Jessie conveniently tries to befriend Michael right before her uncle dies, forcing Michael to take care of her. He teaches her how to use a big gun, not out of fear but with full control over her emotions. They become fast friends anyway.

Michael also takes Jessie with him when he’s inevitably chased down by scrupleless but highly trained members of MI6, who mindlessly follow orders from their tyrannical ex-leader Steven Manafort (Bill Nighy), who talks like a good guy, but has a lot invested in a cartoonishly evil surveillance program called T.H.E.A. None of this seems to matter, though, since this rogue-on-the-run movie, like a lot of post-“The Bourne Identity” fugitive movies, tends to devolve into a handful of underwhelming action scenes scattered between visually indistinct techno-thriller info dumps.

“Shelter” is the kind of movie where a roomful of bureaucrats blink ferociously at surveillance camera footage while their frustrated leader Roberta Frost (Naomi Ackie) scowls at a bank of computer monitors, while her second-in-command gives her unwelcome news. More might have been done with Ackie’s character, who doesn’t really buy the cover story handed to her by Nighy’s slippery villain. But why start there, right?

The film doesn’t do much with Statham either, whose instincts as a performer remain solid, even if his collaborators don’t seem to know what to do with him. Statham’s best scenes depend more on his physicality than his dialogue, but it’s still hard to focus on his chiseled features, given all the empty or unfocused visual space surrounding him.

Statham’s also harder to believe as a character than a presence, given that many of Michael’s hacky lines and throwaway personality traits don’t seem to suit Statham’s persona, like Michael’s love of playing chess by himself or the pencil drawings that Jesse finds all over his desk-top. I believe Statham is a world-weary Atlas whose over-the-shoulder/backting acting puts many lesser action stars to shame. I don’t believe Statham or many other actors could finesse such unfailingly rote lines or such bland tough-guy posturing.

Most action scenes in “Shelter” are also never better than their poor presentation. A car chase and two hand-to-hand fights have their moments, despite the filmmakers’ smothering attempts to convey frantic action through jarring cuts and distracting handheld camerawork. No momentum develops here, though, making it harder to suggest that “Shelter” might satisfy Statham completists.

Action fans know that there’s nothing wrong with cribbing from earlier, more successful programmers, just as long as the formula’s executed well enough or has enough chutzpah for a few memorably deranged highlights. Unfortunately, the biggest spikes of adrenaline in “Shelter” would barely fill out a half-minute sizzle reel.

Michael’s apparently something of an improvised weapons expert, as we see in a couple of fights where he attacks his equally well-trained opponents with whatever’s lying around. It’s a shame that there’s no real build-up in the ostensibly climactic brawl where Statham wraps his fist in a long metal chain. That description might be enough to sell this movie’s ideal viewers, but in reality, that kind of inexpert pandering feels like a dim afterthought after so much throat-clearing.

“Shelter”’s one of those bad movies that you can’t really dissuade its built-in audience from seeing. Somebody’s going to see or hear qualified praise for this meager potboiler and get their hopes up. That’s an easy trap to fall into, especially if you, like my fellow Statham fans, are willing to settle for less.

But what makes this all so depressing isn’t the film’s singular faults, but its startlingly consistent lack of craftsmanship and inspiration. The movie’s low-effort charms don’t merit your goodwill, even if Statham’s diehards might still be able to squint hard enough to see sparks fly.