You think you know what you’re going to get from a Liam Neeson thriller titled “Retribution.”

But his latest, the third remake of a “There’s a bomb in your car and you can’t get out” Spanish thriller (“El Desconocido”), has a few deviations from formula.

And the Big Irishman, often framed in beads-of-sweat-tight closeups, gives a fine, strung-out and fraught performance as a long-hustling hedge fund manager whose financial shortcuts may have screwed-over the wrong somebody somewhere along the way.

Matt Turner is a closer with his partnership, the guy the head of the firm (Matthew Modine) calls in to buck up clients who get cold feet on this sale or that investment in a volatile market.

He’s a barely-attentive parent, due to miss yet another soccer match of Emily the tween (Lilly Aspell), dealing with a teen son Zach (Jack Champion) in open rebellion.

But his ever-disappointed wife (Embeth Davidtz) holds him to that one promise, to take the kids to their respective Berlin schools on yet another busy weekday. The daughter happily complies, but the son he has to chase down and beg to get in his pricey Mercedes SUV.

Matt didn’t make much of all the system-alerts that came on when he buckled his seatbelt and punched on the ignition. This failed, that requires service, another system turns up error messages.

But director Nimród Antal (“The Whiskey Bandit,” “Control”) lets us zero in on the bucket snapping, the circuits activating and that thing beneath Matt’s seat. When the disguised voice comes on a cell phone tucked into the center console, we’re hardly surprised.

Don’t get out. Your seat has a weight-sensitive trigger. Don’t call the cops. Oh, your kids are here? Too bad. Do what this fellow says or “You’ll be pulling your guts from the trees from here to Vienna!”

“Who IS this?” gets no answer. “WHY?”

“There IS no why.”

Matt and his kids are trapped in this car, sent hither and yon in something like “real time, from straße to straße, witnessing other cars blowing up and Matt’s friends and business associates meeting grisly ends after having just enough time to freak out and panic.

Matt almost does, despite his pleas to “Stay calm” and “everything will be fine” to his kids and others.

Neeson is damned good in this part, a business man with none of those “Taken” “particular skills,” just a guy who works out on the heavy bag and keeps his temper in check — more or less.

The adults in the cast respond to this extraordinary danger in ways you’d expect, with Modine, Davidtz and especially Arian Moayed, as a manager trying to stop his freaking-out-wife from fleeing their car, standing out for serving up a realistic reaction to this terror.

The kids don’t quite shrug it off, but they’re far more blase than you’d expect. Noma Dumezweni, as an Interpol cop, has her moments, but delivers little flinty flair in the part.

The narrative spins its wheels in the middle acts as the picture loses much of its opening momentum, only to recover much of that for a talkative, over-explained and somewhat predictable finale.

But Antal and Neeson gives us an opening act that leaves the metallic taste of dread in one’s mouth, a dilemma in which neither Matt nor we see a solution, a “problem” we can’t work out any more than trapped and doomed Matt can.

And Neeson gives us a bit more to chew on here than his standard hunt-for-his-daughter/avenge-his-son fare, an actor who lets us see the panic, see the wheels frantically turning and who never shies away from letting us see him sweat.

Rating: R, violence, some profanity

Cast: Liam Neeson, Embeth Davidtz, Noma Dumezweni, Jack Champion, Lilly Aspell and Matthew Modine.

Credits: Directed by Nimród Antal, scripted by Christopher Salmanpour, based on a Spanish thriller screenplay by Alberto Marini. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:31