Jin Roh was written by Mamoru Oshii, the director of Ghosts in the Shell, and directed by debutant Hiroyuki Okiura. Set in an alternative post world war 2 Japan where the military has taken over and an underground, the sect, has sprung up to fight it. The film opens with a young woman who is used as a bomb carrier cornered by the fearsome security force in a sewer. She makes to pull the string that will explode her bomb and despite himself the soldier cannot shoot. She explodes the device and he luckily survives but with a demotion. Unknown to him he is soon to become a pawn in a power game designed at ending the security force for good which will use a woman he believes to be the bomber's sister. Is he a sitting duck for this intrigue or is he less of a victim that he seems?

Where Ghosts in the Shell is as much about dazzling the eyes as the intellect, Jin Roh is a film with tremendous literary sensitivity and heart. The tale reveals itself piece by piece and the twist and turns on the way mean that little is as it seems. This clever unravelling is matched by a central romance between an insurgent bomber and the security force soldier which uses the device of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood to add pathos and emotional significance. This allows the thriller like convolutions to be intriguing but to ensure that the film has strong emotional punch. In the finale, it is hard to resist a tear as we learn that beasts must be beasts and humans must be humans.

It is a shame that the director has done precious little since this superb debut because Jin Roh is a great film. A film that asks whether any kind of leopard can change their spots and considers how the appearance of civility is actually gained through the unacknowledged strength of the violent and bestial. A film that almost 10 years on has added significance in a world of suicide bombers and the seduction of propaganda from both supposed "terrorists" and "liberators" alike. In the world of the film the real casualty of the tribalism and sectarianism is love and vulnerability.

An immense animation that is every bit the equal of the best of Oshii's work with an impact on the viewer which is more about feeling than technology.