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Jackie Chan’s mix of slapstick comedy with lighting-fast action has earned him the nickname “clown prince of kung fu.” In recent years in a desire to improve his acting skills and change his image, Chan has tried to take on roles that are more dramatic. His new Hong Kong movie, Shinjuku Incident, is definitely a stark contrast to his popular, but light Rush Hour movies. Shinjuku Incident is more violent than Chan’s typical films to the point that he and the movie’s director Derek Yee have decided to not release it in China  because they do not feel it will pass the government’s censors. They considered cutting out some of the violence, but decided against it because they felt the movie would lose some of its honesty.

Jackie Chan’s last few movies have not been big hits and Shinjuku Incident will not end that streak.

Steelhead (Chan) is an illegal immigrant that goes to Japan to find his missing girlfriend, Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei). After a few weeks of working low-paying jobs and beginning to lose faith that he’ll find her, Steelhead sees Xiu Xiu with another man. He learns that she is married to a Yakuza gang leader named Eguchi (Masaya Kato, Godzilla) and she’s changed her name to Yuko.

After his friend Jie (Daniel Wu, Around the World in 80 Days) is attacked by a local gang, Steelhead organizes the other Chinese in the area to fight back. Steelhead becomes a community leader after his group has a successful encounter with the gang that attacked Jie. Steelhead meets Lily (Fan Bingbing), a nightclub owner, when he saves her from a robbery attempt. They quickly become friends with the possibility that their relationship may become more in the future. Steelhead also makes friends with a local police detective, Kitano (Naoto Takenaka), after he saves Kitano’s life.

Steelhead eventually gets mixed up with Eguchi and the Yakuza hoping that he can use them to help set up legitmate businesses for himself and his friends. All heck breaks loose, when fighting begins within the Yakuza and greed starts to poison the minds of Steelhead’s friends.

Longtime fans of Jackie Chan may be disappointed with Shinjuku Incident because the mix of laughs and kicks that has made Chan a international star are missing here. The laughs and smiles so common in other Chan movies are replaced with sorrow and anger. The punches and kicks we all enjoy are substituted with swords and knives slicing and dicing off anything that gets too close.

A little too grim, actually. Chan has tried and succeeded with serious thrillers before (like the 1993 “Crime Story”) but this film isn’t just dramatic, it’s depressing. And taking away Chan’s physicality takes away too much. Forced to rely on facial expressions for his performance, he’s mostly glum and glummer.

A better director might have helped. John Woo, for example — who Chan last worked with more than 30 years ago, when both were doing cheap kung-fu movies — is an old hand at this kind of neo noir. The story of “Shinjuko,” with its shifting loyalties, lost loves and feeling of fatalism, seems almost made for Woo.

Unfortunately, director Derek Yee isn’t nearly as accomplished. The night scenes aren’t just gloomy but dark, and a climactic battle is confusingly edited. Nor is he very good at clarifying the complicated plot, which involves several factions slipping into an all-out war.

It is great to see Chan on screen again, without having Chris Tucker yammering at him, and bearing up under an onslaught of clichés and bad jokes. And it’s not surprising that, like Chow Yun-Fat, Maggie Cheung and other Asian stars, he had to go home to get some respect.

But dignified shouldn’t be a synonym for dull, which is what Chan often is here. In the end, “Shinjuku Incident” is like “The Towering Inferno,” and those other “straight” parts Fred Astaire did towards the end of his career. Yes, it’s still marvelous to see the star on screen, in anything. But, please — couldn’t he just dance a little?

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