Neeson's action hero ages well in problematic 'Run'

Harrison Ford starred as Indiana Jones at 65. Sylvester Stallone played his last "Expendables" at 67. Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" vigilante continued to mop the streets at the age of 72.

So, in the specialized arena of senior citizen action heroes, Liam Neeson, 62, remains a relative spring chicken after playing a honked-off dad with a particular set of skills in the popular "Taken" trilogy.

Neeson's latest avenging father thriller - make that avenging grandfather thriller - the descriptively titled "Run All Night" reunites the Irish actor with Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra from 2011's Twilight Zoneish mystery "Unknown" and last year's washed-up, alcoholic air marshal thriller "Non-Stop."

In "Run All Night," Neeson plays Jimmy Conlon, a washed-up, alcoholic Brooklyn hit man nicknamed "The Gravedigger." In recent years, he's become a chain-smoking bum rejected by his estranged son Michael (Joel Kinnaman) who keeps his own family far away from dear old killer Dad.

Jimmy and his lifelong buddy, mob boss Shawn Maguire (an increasingly craggy Ed Harris), pledge to "cross the line together" someday. But their optimistic plans of simultaneous deaths tank when Jimmy kills Shawn's son Danny (Boyd Holbrook) as he's about to shoot Michael following an ambush of Albanian drug dealers in Danny's apartment.

Poor Michael has nothing to do with the drugs, violence or his father. He's just a chauffeur who witnesses Danny kill an Albanian. Good thing Jimmy had the place under surveillance and thought to bring his old gun, a six-shooter revolver.

Jimmy discovers that honesty doesn't always make the best policy when he explains to Shawn why he had to kill Danny. Shawn screeches, "I'm coming after your boy with everything I got!"

That apparently includes Shawn's own incompetent mob soldiers and a nasty master assassin named Price, played with uncommon ruthlessness by Common himself.

As if things couldn't get worse for Jimmy, New York Detective Harding (Vincent D'Onofrio), who's been trying to nail the mob hitman for 30 years, leads cops on a frenzied chase to arrest Jimmy and charge him with the killings of the Albanian drug dealers.

The only original part of this overwritten, male-dominated screenplay by Brad Ingelsby (he wrote Christian Bale's brotherly revenge tale "Out of the Furnace") stems from the villainous Shawn crusading for revenge rather than Jimmy's relatively heroic protagonist.

"Run All Night" hardly bores thanks to editor Dirk Westervelt's keen sense of pacing, plus a parade of knife fights, gunbattles, fisticuffs, car chases, foot races, apartment building parkour stunts and superfluous flashbacks.

But the all-important details don't add up here.

How does Jimmy's booze-fueled former hit man suddenly regain the physical edge to overcome peak-condition underworld enforcers? Jimmy doesn't do as much as a push-up before going full-bore Jason Bourne.

Why does Jimmy hide unloaded guns around his home? Is he worried about the safety of the grandkids who never visit?

When Jimmy does meet his grandkids for the first time - as we suspected would happen before the closing credits - wouldn't one of them wonder why grandpa's face is all bloody and that he's been shot in the shoulder?

Martin Ruhe's nocturnal cinematography makes wonderful, widescreen use of New York's cityscapes. So does Jimmy, who bounces around so many Gotham locations that he'd have to be the Flash to visit them all in the few hours that pass in "Run All Night." How does he do it?

"I'm too old to remember!" Jimmy says early in the movie.

That's forgivable. After all, he is a mob killer of a certain age.

“Run All Night”

★ ★

Starring: Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Common, Bruce McGill

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated R for drug use, language, violence. 114 minutes