One Spoon of Chocolate (dir. The RZA)

By: Adam Freed

In the 32 years since Wu-Tang Clan released their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) a great deal has happened for the New York-based hip hop pioneers.  Of its original nine members, several Wu-Tang veterans have ventured into the world of visual media, but perhaps none more decisively than the RZA. Born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, the RZA was once known as the de facto leader of the legendary hip hop conglomerate, as he produced most of their albums as well as a wide array of the group's solo projects.  It should come as no surprise then, that RZA, now fifty-six years of age, still has plenty of stories to tell.  RZA is an artist, regardless of medium, and with the same razor keen delivery with which he once pushed the hip hop boulder up the pop culture mountain, the Brooklyn native writes and directs the electrifying action thriller One Spoon of Chocolate.  One of the most difficult aspects of filmmaking for directors to hone is a unique voice, one that addresses thematic subject matter near to their heart, while delivering an engaging message wrapped in a memorable visual package.  RZA seems to have been born with this gift as One Spoon of Chocolate overflows with a stylistic and thematic richness that is abundantly watchable as well as being perfectly suited for the current American cultural landscape.

Set in the fictional, yet aptly named town of Karensville, Ohio, One Spoon of Chocolate begins in about as horrific a fashion as possible, establishing its race-based brutality from its opening scene.  There are no shortage of revenge thrillers, but very few that are as boldly direct as the RZA’s high octane film.  The plague of veiled racism is not an issue in One Spoon of Chocolate as its writer and director removes the veil and replaces it with a klan hood.  The film stars Shameik Moore (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Dope) as Randy “Unique” Joneson, a former Army veteran who has fallen on legal hard times for his role in a fight that he didn’t start, but certainly ended. Joneson is given an opportunity to start anew by his parole officer who allows him to move to rural Ohio so that he and his cousin Ramsee can live together.  Very quickly it becomes clear to Randy that Karenstown is not a place that is welcoming to black Americans, a fact that punches audiences in the face given the deliberate and repeated use of racist and inflammatory language to drive home this point.  How cousins Ramsee and Randy are expected to survive in a town so blatantly entrenched against them becomes a drumbeat of thematic intent within the action film.

There have been plenty of films that feature a newcomer in a strange town refusing to turn the other cheek.  Quite famously, First Blood (1982) and more recently Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge (2024) are stories of military trained outsiders who find themselves compelled to upend a viciously corrupt small town government.  Unlike Rebel Ridge however, a film that is far more effective as a municipal conspiracy, One Spoon of Chocolate leaves a somewhat irrelevant conspiracy on the back burner as it takes on racial injustice one mouthbreathing redneck at a time.  The deliberate nature of pitting white bigotry against a physically capable lone black hero is a wonderful call back to the Blaxploitation era of the early 70’s in which black America was at long last given the screen heroes that they deserved. RZA tactfully layers on top of this aesthetic, his fascination and respect for Shaolin Kung-Fu films, resulting in an electrifying intersection of cultural influences.  There are precious few moments in the violent and propulsive One Spoon of Chocolate where audiences are allowed to come up for air, a characteristic that unquestionably comes from its Wu-Tang roots.  

Target Score: 7/10 - A well meaning black man is surrounded by a town and a bureaucracy tainted with the poison of bigotry.  Star Shameik Moore leads a gifted ensemble cast in a memorable battle of good versus evil in the RZA’s One Spoon of Chocolate, a devilishly unique take on the revenge thriller. 

One Spoon of Chocolate is included in Movie Archer's coverage of the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.