The stakes could not be higher in the thriller “Vanished into the Night.” A father, in debt and going through a divorce, loses his children to kidnappers and must reconnect with a hoodlum from his wayward youth to raise the cash for the ransom.

The father is Italian, and there’s an implied “You how Italians are about their children.” The mother is American, a career woman who wants to get back to her career, and it’s implied that “you know how judgemental American career women can be.”

But there’s little urgency and the stakes never feel as high as you’d think in this twists-aplenty Italian remake of the Argentian thriller “The Seventh Floor.”

Some of that’s by design. The father Pietro, played the terrific Italian star Riccardo Scarmacio (“John Wick: Chapter 2,” “A Haunting in Venice”) reacts to this news as just what he has coming to him.

A messy, underscore-his-shortcomings divorce, his history of gambling an the ruinous gamble that he and his wife could buy a house in suburban Bari (in the south of Italy) and make it a profitable B & B have left him debt in the part of country where debts with the wrong folks can be dangerous. Scarmacio plays Pietro in a resigned panic. He could almost see this coming.

His wife’s panic takes the form of fury. He’ll have to come up with the money himself, and that means reconnecting with an unsavory old friend he keeps at arm’s length. The kids would love to call him “Uncle Nico” (Massimo Gallo), but Dad won’t have it.

Now, he’s got to beg for money from someone he’s shunned. When Nico gives him “a job” to pay for the cash, one that involves his semi-rigid dinghy (motorboat), Pietro’s panic about the kids recedes as he’s got to learn how to carry out a “meet” and “handover” and get back to shore before the Otranto authorities figure out what he’s up to.

There’s a melodramatic weight that hangs on this picture and threatens to smother the life out of it. This contrived incident leads to that one, and so on, with characters responding in ways that defy logic or common sense.

The script hangs on stereotypes, but the one director Renato De Maria accidentally includes is Italian indolence. There’s a lack of urgency that gives the film the feel of something unreal, as if Pietro is experiencing this in shock.

That’s a valid choice. Scarmacio’s Pietro faces violence like a man who’s forgetten how to be violent.

But the veteran British actress Wallis (“The Tudors,” “The Mummy”) struggles to convey panic, rage, motherliness or mystery in her performance. And Gallo’s Nico is written and played as a cartoon mobster — partying, acting over-familiar and failing to make his shunned and irked about it “old friend” convincing.

About the best thing one can say about this broken-watch/ticking clock thriller is its travelogue qualities. Whatever other movies have conveyed about the depth and dangers of organized crime in the south of Italy, “Vanished into the Night” (in Italian and English, with subtitles) makes a great advert for “Visit Scenic Bari.”

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Riccardo Scarmacio, Annabella Wallis and Massimo Gallo

Credits: Directed by Renato De Maria, scripted by Luca Infascelli and Francesca Mariana, based on the Argentine film “The 7th Floor,” scripted by Patxi Amezcua and Alejo Flah. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32