A new Wes Anderson film is always a treat worth undertaking. The director's precision and craft can sometimes threaten to make his film's cold and devoid of emotion. But Isle of Dogs, with its politically-tinged narrative and warmth to its canine characters, might be one of his most soulful films to date.

Set in a future Japan where dogs have been banished to prevent the spread of illness, a young boy, Atari, flies to the island housing them to rescue his dog. He is helped in his journey by a pack of dogs led by the fiercely independent Chief. Back home an autocratic leader pushes for ever more extreme punishments of dogs as a young journalist investigates behind-the-scenes.

Isle of Dogs has a visual and audio beauty to it. Alexandre Desplat's score is wonderful, especially when coupled with the film's magnificent stop-motion animation. Where Fantastic Mr Fox threatened to morph into stuffed-animals being puppeted for our amusement, here the characters seem to live and breathe. The movement of the dogs' hair, caused by the animators, gives a sense of the wind surrounding them. For such a perfectionist as Anderson is, there is an impressive scrappiness to Isle of Dogs that is particularly endearing. But it wouldn't be a Wes Anderson film without several perfectly constructed shots. The sushi-making sequence alone is a masterpiece.

The voice cast is impressive, filled mostly with previous Anderson stars. There is noticeably strong work from Edward Norton and Jeff Goldblum, as members of the gang of dogs at the centre of the film, and from Greta Gerwig as an exchange student investigating the situation. While I didn't understand a word he said Koyu Rankin makes an endearing, fabulously passionate Atari. But the stand-out turn comes from Bryan Cranston who gives another wonderfully craggy performance to go alongside Last Flag Flying. His Chief is the beating heart of the film, going on a journey that is sweetly-drawn and very moving.

The one misstep for me is to not subtitle the Japanese characters. It is cute for their words to be relayed via a translator when necessary for the story but it feels a block between the audience and these characters. The cultural appropriation debate surrounding the film is fascinating and there is probably some merit to it. But for the most part Anderson feels genuinely affectionate towards Japanese culture. I just wish he had chosen to open these characters up to us.

Isle of Dogs is a film packed with detail, a treat for anyone in the mood for a more adult-focused film. It slides alongside last year's My Life as a Courgette and The Red Turtle as an example of the breadth of themes this genre of cinema can explore and is another triumph from a director who just keeps doing his own thing. Long may he continue to do so.

Isle of Dogs is the latest offering from Wes Andreson. This is only his second animated feature after Fantastic Mr Fox which is surprising as Anderson is a director who demands maximum control over his unique visual style.

Anderson’s script, which is co-written with Roman Coppola, Jason Schwatzman and Kunichi Nomura (who also voices the villain of the piece), tells a story set in dystopian Japan.

The city of Megasaki is in the grips of a dog flu epidemic. Mayor Kobiashi (Nomura’s character) decides to banish all dogs to Trash Island (a long Isle of landfill) despite the protestations of Professor Watanabe (Akira Ito) who believes he has found a cure. The first dog banished is Spots (Liev Schreiber), the dog belonging to Aturi Kobiashi, (Koyu Rankin) the nephew of the mayor. Six months later, Aturi crash lands on the island in an attempt to retrieve his beloved hound. Whilst at first believing Spots to be dead, Aturi teams up with a band of lost pooches (Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Bryan Cranston, Bill Murry and Jeff Goldblum) and they go off on a quest to find Spots.

As you might guess from the clear divide between humans voiced by Asian actors and the dogs voiced by westerners, there is also a language divide. The humans speak in unsubtitled Japanese, which is translated in a variety of humorous ways, and we are told that 'all barks are translated into English'.

This is very much an archetypal Anderson film. Symmetrical frames, flat space camera moves, snap zooms and knolling are all utilised to show the expansively cinematic yet still soft and tactile stop-motion animation. We also get Anderson’s wry humour not necessarily through jokes but through super smart pictorial invention.

I would say however, much like Fantastic Mr Fox, this is somewhat mismarked as a children’s film. Whilst Aturi is a great child character, as is Tracey Walker (a dogs rights activist voiced by Greta Gerwig) I think the film deals with concepts that would be slightly out of some children’s reach: one of dogs says 'who would bring puppies into a world like this?' in a classic moment of Anderson savant.

When the film is just a kooky canine caper, it works spectacularly well. When it tries to be a political thriller about government foul play then it loses its balance (very similar to the flaws and strengths of The Grand Budapest Hotel in that respect). In short, Isle of Dogs does not work on the deep level the writers believe it does, but it’s still a lot of fun.