Once Upon a Crime is a Japanese fantasy comedy-mystery film based on the novel Akazukin, Tabi no Tochu de Shitai to Deau ( 赤ずきん、旅の途中で死体と出会う。) by Aito Aoyagi and published by Futabasha. The film is directed by Yuichi Fukuda and produced by CREDEUS Inc. in association with TV Asahi Corporation. It has a runtime of about 1 hour and 47 minutes.
The cast of the film includes Kanna Hashimoto as Little Red Riding Hood, Yuko Araki as Cinderella, Takanori Iwata as Prince Gilbert, Natsuna, Yumi Wakatsuki, Mirei Kiritani, Tsuyoshi Muro, Masaki Kaji, Tomoharu Hasegawa, Atsuhiro Inukai, Mizuki Yamamoto, Midoriko Kimura, Miki Maya, Jiro Sato and others.
Once Upon a Crime Review
The main protagonist of this fairytale mix-up is Little Red Riding Hood and starts classically with the animation on the book pages. It shows how she was loved by her grandmother and received the red cloak as a gift, which she started wearing everywhere. One day while on her way as usual, she encounters a Witch to whom she pays no heed yet gets involved with her.
Despite not being good at the spell to make shoes better, the witch wants to make her boots beautiful because that’s what matters in the kingdom. Contrarily, she transforms the boots into slimy and dirty instead, so Red has to take them off and wash them. While getting angry at the witch, the boots flow down the stream and as she goes after them and meets the downtrodden and unkempt Cinderella.
Once again it takes the classic path as a witch transforms their clothes into beautiful dresses, and they set out to attend a fancy ball. The only addition is both the protagonists are going together. However, when their pumpkin carriage hits and kills a man, they hurriedly hide the corpse and head to the ball at the castle. Just as Cinderella and the prince fall in love, the corpse is discovered and the ball is cancelled. Faced with a desperate situation, the girls meet a series of quirky characters as they work to uncover the real killer.
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The film is a mixture of two fairytales with a murder mystery spin-off, where Little Red Riding Hood is more like a Nancy Drew/Sherlock Holmes stuck in an unfortunate situation and the only way out is to solve the case. Initially, the look of the film gives off a kid’s genre vibe with decent visual effects and animatedly exaggerated acting. As the plot thickens, it becomes fairly entertaining.
For the majority of the film, I expected Little Red Riding Hood to switch to the evil side and show that she has been the antagonist the whole time. However, nothing of that sort happens and take it at face value, since she is nothing more than an over-smart detective. On the other hand, the character of Cinderella will certainly surprise you and bring a modern twist to the story.
Overall, the film has a decent plot with a suspenseful mystery to keep you hooked. Along with that, it does try to preach a moral by emphasising how beauty is considered everything in the kingdom and those who don’t fit into the standards are shunned. Commenting on the similar Asian culture which fixates one’s self-worth on how they look and dress up etc.
And then the Prince sets an example by not following the beauty standards when choosing his life partner. One could look at the film as a satire that spins itself into another fantasy epic and also insinuates how Detective Red Riding Hood can be dropped into any fairytale setup and something new can be created out of it.
Rating: 3.5/5
Once Upon a Crime is available for streaming on Netflix.
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