Nearly 14 years ago, in these very pages, I gave an OK review to The Man With the Iron Fists, the directorial debut from Wu-Tang Clan founder/rapper/Sinophile RZA. He also starred as the titular character, a runaway slave turned literally heavy-handed badass, doing all kinds of kung-fu foolery with Lucy Liu, Dave Bautista and a knife-wielding Russell Crowe. (I said it’s “stylish but shallow,” yet “succeeds at being high-flying, high-kicking pulp.”)
Since RZA’s ensuing directorial efforts — the 2017 musical drama Love Beats Rhymes and the 2020 hood heist flick Cut Throat City — had him delving into different genres, I thought his days of helming throwback chopsocky junk were behind him. (He also starred in and co-wrote The Man With the Iron Fists 2, which went straight to video in 2015.) But we’re back at the grindhouse of his mind with One Spoon of Chocolate, RZA’s Blackafied take on the vengeful vigilante films of the 1970s.
The first film to be distributed by RZA’s company 36 Cinema (old pal/revenge-pic connoisseur Quentin Tarantino is listed as one of the movie’s executive producers), Chocolate has the writer-director taking us back to those glory days of racist, sketchy white people being yoked up and wiped out on screen by everyone from Coffy to Billy Jack to Travis Bickle. RZA stays behind the camera on this one, giving all the screen time to Shameik Moore — the voice of the Spider-Verse’s Miles Morales — as Iraq War vet/ex-con Randy (aka Unique). After doing some therapeutic time at a New York halfway house, he convinces his parole officer (Blair Underwood) to let him move to Ohio to live with his cousin (RJ Cyler). Little does he know that his kin’s town (named Karensville — cute!) is run by a snarling, power-mad sheriff (Michael Harney) and his buff, unhinged son (Harry Goodwins), who also leads a crew of baseball-bat-wielding Chads who mostly speak in racial slurs.
These good ol’ boys don’t take too kindly to this city boy and his tendency to easily whoop the ass of anyone who steps to him and his cuz. After a couple of run-ins (a scuffle at a public basketball court and a convenience-store attack that sends one of the white guys to the hospital) that leave this pale posse bruised and broken, the butt-hurt brood then goes on the hunt for this troublemaker. Unique ends up hiding out at the home of his cousin’s girl’s bestie (Paris Jackson — yes, Michael’s kid!), where he trains, welds some weapons (of course one of his fists ends up covered in metal), and prepares to retaliate with help from an ultimate-survival handbook, given to him by a coked-up, guitar-strumming salesman (Nashville’s own Jason Isbell!).
If Fists was RZA making his own Shaw Brothers Studio release, Chocolate sees him getting his John Carpenter on. The menacing, synth-crazy background music (from veteran horror composer Tyler Bates) and lens flares that pop up during the shadowy, desolate night scenes bring to mind the stylized, savage nocturnal actioners the Halloween helmer did in his prime. This is truly the work of someone who grew up on Assault on Precinct 13/Escape From New York double features.
If RZA stayed on this route, you could appreciate Chocolate for being the brazenly crude (but entertaining as hell) drive-in movie it so wants to be. But Bobby Digital decides to get serious in the film’s second half, suddenly and solemnly shifting the tone and actually throwing pathos and gravitas into a movie that was batshit-bonkers up to this point. It’s like that ’60s Black-pride drama Nothing but a Man, but with bone-crushing fight scenes.
Set during an undisclosed, smartphone-free era (I’m assuming it’s the ’90s since Moore wears one of those garish leather road-sign jackets we used to wear back then) and allegedly based on true events, Chocolate is RZA going for that elevated-exploitation bag. But it doesn’t work — the last thing self-referential, B-movie trash should do is start taking itself seriously halfway through. It’s a movie with cartoonishly evil villains, topless women, gory scenes of illegal organ harvesting, a loud coke orgy and a ridiculous sex scene that looks like it was deleted from the final cut of Booty Call. Why ruin all that dumb, fun madness with melancholic moments of Black misery?
The film’s tiki-torch types might eventually get theirs, but you’ll have to wait a while (and plow through some soul-numbing shit) before you see it. And that’s not to mention a preachy, histrionic, hella-unsatisfying final scene that may infuriate Black folk more than inspire them.
Even though I give RZA points for attempting to create cinematic rotgut for lovers of both White Elephant and Termite Art, Chocolate is one of the most biting-off-more-than-it-can-chew movies I’ve ever seen.
