“In the Land of Saints and Sinners” is an embarrassment of riches, a forlorn thriller cast with many of the greatest Irish character actors of their generation and featuring the cream of the next generation of Irish leading ladies.

Of all the tales of vengeance built around men of violence Liam Neeson has undertaken since “Taken” gave his career a long, lucrative act, this Robert Lorenz B-picture has to be the best. It’s colorful and pitiless, sad and even sentimental and set in Ireland when the IRA spilled blood and shrugged off “collateral damage” like the worst among us.

Neeson plays a WWII vet turned “freelance” triggerman in mid-70s Donegal, “the forgotten county” not nearly as far from “The Troubles” as you might think.

Colm Meaney plays the purser and facilitator of these hits, poetically staged in a grove of tiny fur trees. They’re tiny because Finbar Murphy (Neeson) plants them. And they’re a grove because that’s what he has his victims carry to the spot where they dig their own grave before their shotgun execution.

Every tiny tree is a grave.

Ciarán Hinds is the lone local member of the Garda, the police of the Republic of Ireland, a cheerful constable who loses target shooting bets with Finbar on the cliffs overlooking the Atlanic because he thinks he’s shooting against a buyer and seller of rare books. The chap has a handsome seaside cottage and drives a new Triumph. He must be doing something…lucrative.

And Kerry Condon is the fanatical IRA crew chief whose latest bombing in Belfast killed children. Now she and her bomb-making crew (Desmond Eastwood, Conor MacNeil and Seamus O’Hara) are on the lam, bringing their “war” to sleepy Glencolmcille and environs.

The Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane script is a collection of tropes, set-pieces and genre picture cliches. Our killer wants to get out.

“There’s more to me than this,” Finbar tells Robert (Meaney) after one particularly grim shooting. “I’d like folks to see it.”

The victim was Mr. “Favor us with a song” at any pub that knew him, and he sings as he faces death after digging his grave in the grove of the dead.

Finbar wants to give this up, maybe be better and less dangerous company to the gardener-neighbor (Niamh Cusack) caring for a dying husband.

That’s when Doireann (Condon, of “The Banshees of Inishirin”) comes crashing into town, hiding out on the property of her late brother’s barkeeper-widow (Sarah Greene), with her loutish punk little brother (Eastwood) in tow.

How that brother acts around widowed Sinéad’s little girl (Michelle Gleeson) is what gets Finbar’s attention. He decides he will take care of it the way men of violence “take care” of things. Robert’s warnings that “He might be IRA” are unheeded.

And that’s when “The Troubles” in Glencolmcille really begin.

The cast is across-the-board believable and affecting. The leads are on-the-nose right for their parts, with the Oscar-nominated Condon adding another “Banshee” to her repertoire.

“None know the shadows better thjan those under the rocks,” she purrs. And that’s when she’s being nice.

Neeson, Hinds and Meaney each easily reprise variations of characters they’ve played more than once in their careers.

And “Game of Thrones” alumnus Jack Gleeson plays a callow young sharpshooter Finbar regards with contempt, until he thinks the kid is saveable.

Director Lorenz (“Trouble with the Curve,” “The Marksman”) walks a tightrope with the story’s tone — a beautiful setting, overcast skies with flowers in bloom, but most everyone we meet is involved in one aspect or another of the grim and bloody business of “making Ireland free.”

McNally and Loane pepper us with punchy slang about “bone men” (killers) and “peelers” (cops), and with pithy dialogue.

“We had things in common, things we keep hidden.” A redheaded victim who runs is “some ginger Jesse Owens.” Neeson’s meanest threat might be “Ay’ll beatcha with my old anm hands” to a youngster.

Condon’s Doireann frightens most everyone she meets with her fury, her profanity and her threats.But she’s lost her brother, “a sad bastard whose only job was layin’ low.” She’ll have her pound of flesh, thank you.

The great players performing colorful characters delivering great lines virtues transform a fairly routine thriller into something of higher aims, a B-picture almost as poetic as its title — “In the Land of Saints and Sinners.”

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon, Ciarán Hinds, Desmond Eastwood, Niamh Cusack and Colm Meaney.

Credits: Directed by Robert Lorenz, scripted by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane. A Samuel Goldwyn/MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:46