Neeson again the conflicted, death-defying action guy

IF there's trouble lurking and killing to be done, chances are that 62-year-old Liam Neeson is in the picture. The jaded, world-weary characters he plays are rarely squeaky clean - their pasts are shady and their morals suitably murky - but when the chips are down and the bad guys are closing in, who you gonna call?

In a previous life, Neeson was adept at playing patriots and heroic historical figures (Oskar Schindler, Rob Roy, Michael Collins, among others); these days, he's reinvented himself as the go-to guy whenever the script calls for a retirement-age agent/hitman with weight of the world on his shoulders and a particular set of skills on his resumé. Despite a dubious professional past, his characters tend to have a high regard for…