RUN ALL NIGHT (Rated R)

Liam Neeson is at it again in an action thriller that has the hallmark of the “Taken” franchise turned on its head, if only because his central character is now a washed-up Brooklyn mobster and once prolific hit man instead of a skilled former CIA operative.

Fittingly, “Run All Night” is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who performed similar duties for “Unknown” and “Non-Stop,” two action films that share the same bond of Liam Neeson acting heroic in showdowns with bad guys.

This third collaboration with Collet-Serra has Neeson in a tightrope of a different nature, for “Run All Night” has the actor playing the role of Jimmy Conlon, once such a feared assassin that his nickname “The Gravedigger” caused NYPD detective John Harding (Vincent D’Onofrio) to stay on his trail for decades.

Oddly enough, “Run All Night,” though set in the present, has the sense of the gritty New York landscape of the Seventies, where rundown buildings and neighborhoods are festering criminal hot spots. But even more in tune with a bygone era is that police corruption is rampant.

Early on, two NYPD patrolmen are spotted taking bribes from the Irish criminal enterprise run by Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris), the man for whom Jimmy Conlon spent a lifetime doing contract killings and other assorted misdeeds.

Now semi-retired, Conlon has seen better days. An alcoholic living in a shabby Brooklyn apartment where he can’t afford to pay the heating bills, Conlon has become a joke to the younger hoods in the Maguire criminal family.

Scraping by on meager handouts, Conlon is reduced to such humiliating chores as playing Santa Claus at a mobster’s family gathering.

He’s also doing errands for Maguire’s hotheaded, loose cannon son Danny (Boyd Holbrook), who lacks his father’s smarts and sharp instincts.

A very big part of the guilt that wracks Jimmy during his sober moments is the knowledge that his estranged son Mike (Joel Kinnaman) adamantly refuses to have anything to do with him, such that Jimmy has never met Mike’s wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and two grandchildren.

Though he once had a promising career as a boxer, Mike Conlon is a working-class stiff who thinks first of providing and caring for his family, doing construction work by day and driving limousines at night.

At the boxing gym, he’s also a mentor to a Bronx kid, who figures prominently into the story when things go wrong one night.

Driving some shady-looking Albanians to a meeting, Mike hardly realizes that he would end up having to run for his life after Danny Maguire winds up in a shootout and decides that he must eliminate any potential witnesses to multiple execution-style murders.

When Mike becomes a target of the Maguire clan, Jimmy must make a choice between the crime family he chose and the real family he abandoned long ago.

The decision for Mike is tough because Shawn Maguire has been his longtime best friend and confidante.

With Mike on the run, Jimmy’s only penance for his past mistakes may be to keep his son from the same fate that Jimmy knows awaits him if he betrays the Irish mob. Did I fail to mention that “Run All Night,” aside from having a lot of violent action, is a story of redemption?

The central story is that the sins of the fathers come back to haunt their sons. While Shawn’s son is a ruthless punk who has no control of his emotions, Jimmy’s son has no love for his absentee father, who abandoned the family long ago and only resurfaced five years ago for the funeral of his former wife, the mother of Mike.

Set to pulse-pounding action that results in a thrilling car chase in Brooklyn and a tense manhunt in a burning Bronx apartment building, “Run All Night” touches all the bases for pure adrenaline excitement, even better than the best of the “Taken” films.

Though the story is full of action, the most interesting feature is the examination of the fractured relationships between two men who are like brothers, and a father trying to make amends with his son for things that happened years ago.

The estrangement that Mike feels towards his father is not so easily overcome, even though Jimmy is taking great risks to shield his grown son from vicious thugs.

But in the course of one long night, being chased through the grim New York streets by both sides of the law, the inevitable bonding occurs. 

While Jimmy penetrates the Maguire hideout and guns down a great number of henchmen, he and Mike do not so easily elude the most fearsome contract assassin Andrew Price (Common), a killing machine willing to eliminate Mike’s entire family if necessary.

The bottom line for “Run All Night” is that if you are a fan of the action heroics in several Liam Neeson films bookended by the first “Taken” to the most recent “Taken 3,” then this latest effort is a comfortable fit.

Whenever our hero, even when flawed, sets out to protect a family member, expect plenty of explosive action fanfare.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.