‘One Spoon of Chocolate’ review: As a director, RZA channels Jordan Peele’s social horror for an action film

You would be forgiven to think A spoon of chocolate was made by someone who has never been near a camera. RZA may not be the first filmmaker to come to mind when he thought of the martial arts cinema, but his obsession for life for the genus Wuxia – seeds planted during the 90s of his legendary rap group, Wu -Tang Clan – has the impression that it should take place in a way. Unfortunately, the result seems comical The man with iron fists, that he co-written with Eli Roth, and made a passage of realization on Marvel Iron (no relationship).

The low notes of action of the film have racial violence (and just subsequent reprisals) which arrive more in the form of light bumps than heavy kicks and fists. It is also the umpteenth project with the adjacent horror in the shadow of Jordan Peele To go outA historical film whose short lifespan has already given too many imitators to count. As if the kick of ass creation was not enough to spoil on its own, A spoon of chocolate Also fails spectacularly as a social drama, which makes the agreement two for the least attractive imaginable.

What is A spoon of chocolate about?

The Long-Ateting project was mentioned for the first time By RZA in 2012, as a film covering the 60s and 70s, although it no longer has vintage adjustment – or many which founded it in a discernible way at any time – but its contemporary premise has very direct inspirations. Like peele To go outThe prologue of A spoon of chocolate Includes a young black man passing with caution through a mainly white city, before he was attacked by hidden thugs armed with baseball bats. The fact that this group of assarantors is all white is something you are intuitive – not by the skilful diversion, but rather by lighting, publishing and sloppy framing. The film has no qualms about letting its wicked viciously throw racial insults, but their appearance here is confusing: they are adorned with t-shirts with disinfected slogans and bought in store intended to assault their targets with no more threatening feelings than, “why, I should not!”

Rather than preserving a feeling of mystery, the film depicts the aforementioned black youth placed on a slab, then its organs are harvested by a white sinister doctor in a high -end workshop surrounded by representations of American slavery. This is what the protagonists of the film are faced, although it painfully takes in this black market (word game… intended?) To raise their head again.

Elsewhere, the former unique American soldier (Shameik Moore) tries to readjust himself in civil life when he is shipped to the home of his Cousin Ramsey (RJ Cyler) in Karensville, Ohio, where the opening lynching took place. No, you have not hallucinated this fictitious name of the city – the one who could recall the most unhappy viewers of the crowd of racial horror farce 2021 Karen. A spoon of chocolate Likewise, enter the most superficial symbols possible of racial animus in modern America, invoking online whiteness as online virality and comic vigilante more than an impregnal power structure. Even the title of the film, born from an exchange on the way in which a pinch of cocoa powder can irrevocably modify a glass of milk, gestures towards a history in which the presence of unique could be repercussions through the social fabric of Karensville. However, the city has many black residents, so the metaphor falls flat.

Its racial tensions are revealed in a moment that promises a rock-solid drama: as a unique hoops and Ramsey at the local community center, a group of white children who strike epithets, demanding that the cousins ​​stand by the city. Ramsey, having grown up in Karensville, knows the dangers posed by these self -proclaimed vigilants, although unique is less unwanted to their requests. The tension between these approaches is not something A spoon of chocolate Explore, but this confrontation soon launches a brief action sequence, although the one that sets the disastrous tone of the film.

A spoon of chocolate is filled with a gearbox action.

From the moment, unique shows his skills in martial arts against the Karensville proto-klan, A spoon of chocolate is in trouble. Blocks, kicks and punches land with the whole impact of a comic slap fight, despite the best attempts by RZA to develop a coherent action. The saturated palette seems to refer to an increased reality that the film never manages to match; He died on arrival, but he drags his own soft corpse through the scene after the scene.

On the one hand, it is a bit of a relief that anic passes a large part of the film kidnapped in the sprawling garage of his white romantic interest (played by Paris Jackson) – a character with no real impact on the intrigue of the film or the racial comment – but that does not prevent other action from happening. The vigilante’s troop, revealed to be the masked arm of the illicit organ trade of the film prologue, attacks several other black characters, but their attacks are incredibly strange to watch. This should be crimes of hatred born from the battling battling bats present themselves as sweet love taps in some of the strangest and the most fatal of the choreography ever turned.

During all this time, unique can be a training seen according to a survival manual that he meets earlier in the film. However, these long training montages separate it not only from the intrigue of the film for long periods – preventing him from interacting with the bad guys of his own story – but they have set up promises that are not satisfied. In these obscured clues, unique seems to shape brass joints of spare cars while working on a sort of disjointed armor. However, the first is the only invention that really appears, and the second does not really materialize. Instead, he made a soft unleashing, adorned in a black coat.

When the film reaches its point that is inevitably tedious, it does not even have the decency to keep the promise of a fair blood outpouring.

A spoon of chocolate uses a social drama like a crutch.

The character of Moore is rarely granted the type of complexity which could make a unique point of silence a point of flash of self-reflection. Its place in the modern American zeitgeist is limited to the facts of his experience as a black soldier rejected by the system when he exit (without any significant attempt to make a gesture on the way in which violence at home reflects this abroad, and vice versa). This leaves Moore to cross scenes with a dialogue that reaches a deeper meaning, but never finds it.

White supremacist vigilantes of the film offer verbal racism with the appropriate venom, but the return on investment of their words and actions does not include any thematic weight (or really the weight of all kinds). The ass that ends up presenting itself is not only lame like hell – the edition of the film allows too much dead air, and almost no momentum – but it emanates from the collective cinematographic image of the genus Wuxia without ever crossing flows with the despair of the film with racial horror.

Despite the distinction available to black bodies in the white supremacist championship, A spoon of chocolate Relegated his organ harvest saga to a background tapestry with little relevance. The resulting film is a confused hybrid of shapes that requires a spectacular and cathartic bone crust to even work from a distance, but rather chooses to end with a passive sermon on its own shallow themes, a highlight so scratching the head.

Despite its potential on paper, A spoon of chocolate is a bad time before. He stands in ceremony when he should go for the jugular, and draws both and metaphorically each punch.

A spoon of chocolate was examined from the Film Film Tribeca 2025.