dark_frances
This was one of the best animated movies I have ever seen, with possibly the best animation ever (Japanese characters looking Japanese, people looking different from each other, breathing, having little human quirks, and truly wonderful urban landscapes); the story, motivations, noir/western touch of the ending etc. were also great, but such unobtrusively vivid animation I have never seen before. In addition to everything, it was one of those movies one likes to think about after having seen them, because there are many ideas and meanings yet to be discovered. It also seems to be a movie built in such a way that each further viewing will be very different from the last one, because each time, by the end of the movie, one has discovered new sides of the story that will change the meaning of the next viewing from the beginning...*Big Fat Spoilers from now on* It is important to underline that this movie is not a retelling of "The Little Red Riding Hood" in a modern context; it is a story by itself, using the Riding Hood tale to clarify elements of the plot and character features. The point of interest is not to see an updated version of the folk tale, or to see how the tale can also fit in a modern surrounding, but to use the folk tale in order to help us understand the story of the movie. Our reactions are not "oh look, there's the wolf! and there's the mother! and there's the path of pins! yes it fits, the story can be applied to a modern world!", but "the story is connected to this movie, so he must be the wolf, so the girl had always been in the presence of the wolf, she was never in the presence of the man she was in love with (the mother in the tale)!". The French tale is molded to, or chosen in order to explain the Japanese story, like a (rich and meaningful) analogy, not the other way around, like a retelling. And the way various elements of the tale were used in order to express a new story was extremely well done, as good as the way in which Leone used various elements from old westerns in order to create his "Once Upon a Time in the West". And there's another big source of inspiration used by Oshii for this movie, just as well integrated within the main narrative...What we see in this movie is a young wolf going through a rite of passage and becoming a full-grown beast. Him having visions of the various girls being chased by wolves was not him "being afraid of the beast inside", but him knowing that the beast was inside and will devour the girl, yet getting on with it because that was the only thing he knew to do.The way I saw it, this was not a movie with a message, it was just a movie that presented a story – the story of a man who was actually a wolf in human skin, and whose only place in the world was within his pack, no matter how bitter this may have tasted at times. If you want it (and, from what I saw on forums, some people really want it), it may be a movie about what it is to have an inner nature, or a prescribed social role that cannot be betrayed, but not more.I have also read somewhere that Oshii's constant preoccupation concerns "the beast that hides in the human heart", but I disagree. On the contrary, I think that he is interested more to investigate the weak, sensitive, human, warm spots that linger in the heart of the beasts, as it is the case with Motoko, Ash, Yuichi, and definitely with Fuse (though, in his case, we witness the lingering humanity flickering and dying). Anyway, in his movies, the beast is usually the first thing we see, so it is not something that could be said to be hiding. There are lots of "Vertigo" allusions in this movie, which I had not spotted until I saw a passing mention of Hitchcock's flick somewhere on this forum; and my jaw dropped – of course! The love-with-complications part of the story follows almost step-by-step the plot from Vertigo – woman being spotted by man while standing – purposefully! – by the grave of someone very reminiscent of her, her being by sent by somebody else to seduce a certain convenient male for ulterior reasons unrelated to the two of them – they were both meant to be bare pawns, her fulfilling her role even though she falls for the male, male realizing the trap and using it to counter-manipulate her, now insensible to her feelings, all ending up with him causing her death / killing her directly; there's also a "man being scarred by woman dying in front of him" part in both movies, but in Jin-Roh it takes place differently; oh and Jin-Roh also has a protagonist psychologically scarred by a sequence that takes place in the beginning of the movie, and the people behind the female decoy use precisely this psychological damage in order to fulfill their trap. And none of this is in anyway "remake-ish", because the pieces of the puzzle are being mixed up and used to build a completely different story, like I said about Leone and his "Once Upon a Time in the West". Besides, I missed completely the "Vertigo" during the movie, which can only mean that they were really well embedded in the story, and that the story was powerful enough to not get engulfed by its own sources. The "Vertigo" discovery pretty much settled it, the flick is a 10/10, the first time I go to 10 for an animated movie since I saw "Samurai Champloo", "Mushishi" and "Texhnolyze" two years ago.
Danherb
The plot of Jin-Roh is set in a fictitious Tokyo, several years after the second World War. Violent combats between an anti-administration terrorist organization and the capital's para-military police rock the city over and over again. When Fuse, a member of the capital's police force, gets suspended after a young terrorist messenger blows herself up in front of his eyes, he tries to search for more information about her but gets mired in a secret power struggle between the administration and the capital's police force.The plot of "Jin-Roh" is so sophisticated, it can hardly be described without spoiling some very important facts. The movie then comes up with several stunningly surprising twists that one would hardly have anticipated. But despite, respectively, due to the movie's complexity, it is sometimes hard to follow properly the events and incidents. There are so many different organizations interacting and intriguing, which shall not mean, that the story is inconsistent. Rather are all relationships and hierarchies between the organizations (police, administration, ministries) brilliantly thought-out, but the fact that everybody seems to play off against one another, doesn't make it clear who belongs to whom until the end. I had to watch the movie twice, before realizing every aspect of the story. All this may sound like an ordinary political crime plot, but let me tell you, it is something totally unique. The plot's obscurity perfectly fits its grim atmosphere. The idea of a fictitious past is excellently illustrated by the streets and locations, that seem familiar, but at the same time totally strange.The movie's subjects about guilt, atonement and living with burden make it also pretty depressing, but at the same time, a special cinematic experience, due to its unique stylistic features, such as narrating the story of "Little Red Riding Hood and the evil wolf" during several scenes, which accurately fits the events in the movie itself.All in all, one of the greatest and most unique movies, that I have seen, Mamoru Oshii, once again, created a brilliant and intelligent plot, whose complexity sometimes really reminds oneself of Oshii's "Ghost in the shell". The movie's overwhelming picture language and music contribute to its excellence.
