Neeson’s ‘Run All Night’ runs too long

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Liam Neeson portrays a seasoned killer who wants a better relationship with his only child, so when bad guys come after that child, he won’t stop shooting people until the threat is eliminated.

On paper, “Run All Night” might as well be “Taken,” the movie that transitioned Neeson from actor to action star — and, yes, those are two very different animals.

In reality, it’s closer in spirit to Neeson’s gritty “A Walk Among the Tombstones.”

But if anything, it comes across as a more lifeless version of last fall’s Keanu Reeves vehicle “John Wick,” from the opening scene that finds the hero gravely wounded and reflecting on how he ended up that way to the basic setup in which the son of a gangster screws up and pits a legendary hit man against his former boss.

In this case, Neeson is Jimmy Conlon, the longtime enforcer for his old friend, Brooklyn mobster Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris).

Jimmy has a problem with booze, a la “Tombstones” and “Non-Stop,” and he’s haunted by the faces of those he’s killed. He hasn’t seen his son, Mike (“The Killing’s” Joel Kinnaman), in five years. And he’s reduced to asking for a handout from Shawn’s punk son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook), just to fix the heater in his dumpy apartment. So when Danny demands Jimmy play Santa at the family Christmas party, and Jimmy shows up drunk and swearing at the kids, it’s not his lowest point.

Danny, we learn, has a plan to get out from his old man’s shadow. Unfortunately for him, that plan involves Albanian drug dealers and massive amounts of heroin. When their deal goes sideways, Danny shoots them and sets out to kill the person who can tie them to him — the Albanians’ limo driver, who just happens to be Mike.

Before he can do that, though, Jimmy kills Danny, Shawn orders both of them dead, and Jimmy and Mike try to survive until dawn, meaning they’ll have to “Run All Night.”

Actually, considering the stakes and the title, there’s very little running involved.

In the beginning, it’s closer to “Watching Hockey All Night,” as that evening’s Rangers-Devils hockey game takes up an inordinate amount of screen time for zero payoff.

For a while, it’s “Hiding Out in a Housing Project All Night,” as Jimmy and Mike try to protect a young fighter (Aubrey Omari Joseph) Mike mentors. This leads to the movie’s one fleetingly entertaining scene in which Jimmy and a high-tech assassin (“Selma” Oscar-winner Common), who tells Shawn he’ll kill Jimmy for free, wail on each other with burning table legs.

Finally, it devolves into “Calmly Strolling Around and Shooting People All Night,” as Jimmy cleans house of his former friends.

Vincent D’Onofrio shows up from time to time as the detective who’s spent the past 25 years trying to put Jimmy behind bars. He’s the one who gave Jimmy the nickname “The Gravedigger.” Thanks to a series of crooked cops, he’s the only member of the NYPD Jimmy thinks he can trust.

And the withered shell of Nick Nolte turns up for a few moments to, well, I’m still not sure why he’s there.

“Run All Night” reunites Neeson with Jaume Collet-Serra, his director on “Unknown” and “Non-Stop.” Those movies at least had interesting ideas — an amnesiac doctor who finds someone else posing as him; an air marshal searching for a mysterious hijacker who’s killing people onboard his plane — before ultimately fizzling out.

But “Run All Night,” scripted by Brad Ingelsby, lacks any such originality. Ingelsby’s stripped-down revenge style worked well in “Out of the Furnace,” but here it just feels like an exercise in ticking off the requisite boxes.

Neeson and Harris have been terrific, and, to borrow from the “Taken” franchise, both have a very particular set of skills. But they’re slumming here and never get to showcase them. When they sit down to reminisce about the old days, as they do often, even while trying to kill each other, you’ll wish it were in service of a better movie.

Instead, “Run All Night” is caught in a no man’s land between an action movie with a little drama thrown in and a drama with a bit of action.

The audience that turns up for every “Liam Neeson with a gun” movie — which is sadly becoming every Liam Neeson movie — will get what they pay for.

But the result really should have been tighter and much shorter.

Something along the lines of “Run for About 90 Minutes Or So.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @life_onthecouch.