Even if Quentin Tarantino wasn’t a close friend and filmmaking mentor to the rapper-turned-filmmaker RZA, it would make sense for the first words on screen in RZA’s new movie “One Spoon of Chocolate” to be “Quentin Tarantino Presents.”
RZA has attempted a mash-up of two strains of genre films of the sort that Tarantino likely recommended when he worked at a video store. It’s both the blaxploitation movie where a Black man prevails over an unjust system of white oppression, and the “man comes to town” action movie where a loner (often a troubled Vietnam veteran, as in Sylvester Stallone’s “First Blood”) cleans up a corrupt small town.
One unfortunately comes away from “Chocolate” with a newfound appreciation for how difficult those old exploitation pictures must have been to make well. While RZA’s furious heart is in the right place, “One Spoon of Chocolate” is fatally clunky and overlong, its righteous energy dissipating quickly in an unfocused miasma of stock characters, pointless subplots, and sluggish pacing.
In the film’s cold open, a Black teenager is hitchhiking home on a country road, and the footage is initially black-and-white except for his bright red varsity jacket. (A ‘Schindler’s List’ homage? Sure, why not.) He’s accosted and beaten to near-death by a group of masked thugs and, when he comes to, is stretched out on a backroom operating table where a surgeon starts removing his organs.
Cut to Unique (Shameik Moore of “Dope”), an Iraq War veteran just released after two years in a New York prison for violent assault. With the assent of his kindly parole officer (Blair Underwood), he takes a bus ride back to his hometown of Karensville, Ohio. On the bus, he meets a cocaine-snorting book salesman (musician Jason Isbell) who gives him a leatherbound “Survivalist’s Handbook” full of tips that will serve him well later.
The film should build tension as an escalating tit-for-tat between Unique and the white supremacists, but the screenplay is overcluttered with unnecessary side characters that stall its momentum.
Back home, Unique attempts to quietly rebuild his life, but finds that, despite the name, the institutional racism in Karensville isn’t of the non-violent viral video variety. Those assailants from the movie’s intro are a white power gang led by neo-Nazi Jimmy (Harry Goodwins), and Jimmy happens to be the son of the local sheriff (Michael Harney). Working inside and outside the law, the white power structure of Karensville terrorizes its Black neighbors with impunity, as Unique quickly discovers.
Or, not that quickly, actually. “Spoon” pokes along at 112 minutes when it should be a tight 90. The film should build tension as an escalating tit-for-tat between Unique and the white supremacists, but the screenplay is overcluttered with unnecessary side characters that stall its momentum. Do we really need to spend time with the parents of the girlfriend of Unique’s cousin (RJ Cyler)?
When the action finally arrives, the catharsis is muted by the filmmaking style, as the fights are shot in close-up with handheld cameras that often obscure what’s happening.
Moore is a good actor (he also voices Miles Morales in the “Spider-Verse” movies), and he does what he can to locate the sadness and the rage inside the underwritten Unique. The best performance in the film, honestly, is by Paris Jackson (daughter of Michael), who plays a kindly local who develops an affecting (and surprisingly chaste) bond with Unique.
There are a few shots in “One Spoon of Chocolate” that show RZA’s potential as a filmmaker, such as a car chase through a junkyard under direct moonlight that’s unexpectedly lovely. And the couple of Tarantino Easter Eggs that RZA throws in the film are fun. But most of “One Spoon of Chocolate” is decidedly un-fun – both in the darkness of the subject matter and the clumsiness of the execution.
“One Spoon of Chocolate” opens Friday in theaters. In Madison, it will play at AMC Fitchburg.