One Spoon of Chocolate (2026)

Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, a 22-year-old native New Yorker, moved to the Midwest. Moving from Staten Island to Steubenville, Ohio, can be a major cultural shock. If you watch the movie 8 Mile closely, you’ll see that there are these sorts of frightening norms, a rigid Rust Belt blue-collar born social system at play that doesn’t exist in big cities like New York. Not even in notoriously racist Staten Island.

It stems from the Great Migration, when Black people from the South moved to the Northeast, the Southwest, and the Midwest. During the Industrial Revolution, with the promise of work and resources for everyone, the Midwest became the manufacturing heartland, specifically in the steel and automotive industries.

But then, economic decline. Driven by increased automation, overseas manufacturing competition, and a shift in demand. Underneath the modern racism that you can’t quite place a finger on, that’s what divides whites and Blacks in these factory cities—resources.

That’s how B-Rabbit won his battle; he flipped the narrative on those who were gatekeeping hip-hop as a resource from him (“I am white, I am a fucking bum… I do live in a trailer park!”) Sadly, no one realizes he won by weaponizing a healthy thriving Black, middle-to-upper-class nuclear family (“You went to Crankbrook, that’s a private school… Clarence lives at home with both parents. And Clarence’s parents have a real good marriage.”)

It’s because in these factory towns, the “Black people are not a monolith” ethos isn’t acknowledged. You’re corralled up behind dividing social lines where white law enforcement, with white families and roots in that white community, rationalize and enforce an “us vs them” mindset for resources, by race.

Black people became the resource. Surveilled. Harassed. You’re pulled over on your way to work—ticketed, quota. Car impounded for arbitrary BS charges. You lose your job. But your family has to eat, and needs a place to live. That’s how the gangs and drugs came into these blue-collar towns and became the norm. A criminal charge is never black-and-white (pun so intended). You’re willing to rationalize gray-area risks when faced with these impossible choices. Violence and politics become the norm, not only “us vs them,” but also those you’re forced to live among. It’s how the 22-year-old kid, Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, ended up shooting someone in self-defense.

“I went to trial. And Black dudes don’t really go to trial and win,” explained Diggs, recalling this identity-shaping chapter of his life. He says his ultimate acquittal was a turning point. His mother looked him in the eyes and told him he had a second chance. Not to look back, walk straight. Walk that straight and narrow path.

What do these meandering asides have to do with reviewing One Spoon of Chocolate? The director, Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, is also known as “Ruler, Zig-Zag-Zig, Allah”—or RZA for short. He’s the architect and founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, which is an inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. You know, the super rap group RZA produced, selling more than 40 million records worldwide, including the 4x platinum Wu-Tang Forever.

In a sit-down with New York Live’s Sara Gore, RZA says that as an artist, “you’re always going to put your own experience into your work.” He was speaking about his hyperreal experience in one of these kinds of towns. He believed there was corruption in Steubenville and that he was treated as an outsider. Thankfully, he made it “back home to New York” and started his hip-hop career.

This is the inspiration for One Spoon of Chocolate’s fictional town of “Karensville,” Ohio. Get it? “Karens” ville. You know, because of the way white Karens surveil and harass, like they have a license or authority to do so. Finger on speed dial, waiting to call local law enforcement—to enforce their “us vs them” mindset for resources. When you’re into all types of cool shit like I am and a Wu-Tang superfan, you get their members’, like RZA’s, thought process immediately.

RZA’s One Spoon of Chocolate is an action thriller with sophisticated, caustic charm and clawed social commentary. It’s centered around Unique (portrayed by Shameik Moore, of Dope and the voice of Miles Morales in the Spider-Verse films). He’s ex-military and a wrongfully accused ex-convict looking for a clean slate in Karensville. But after a brawl with a local gang and the casual disappearance of the community’s young Black men, he suspects there’s a strange, more sinister social system afoot. He soon finds himself not only the target of Karensville’s local gang but also its law enforcement. Faced with impossible choices, Unique refuses to be a victim of the town’s local norms.

Get it? “Unique?” Oh, for Wu-Tang superfans, we know it’s also part of his cousin, Wu-Tang member, the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s alias, “Ason Unique.” Another Wu member and Dirty’s day-one homie, Method Man, says Dirty’s name, taken from an 1980s kung fu flick, was because he was so unique: “there ain’t no father to his style.” In One Spoon of Chocolate, the character Mr. Lindsey, played by Rockmond Dunbar, tells Unique he’s going up against a giant—the system. Unique says David slew the giant Goliath with only a “gotdamn slingshot.”

If you look hard enough, you see inspiration from RZA’s cousin’s attempted murder charges after allegedly exchanging gunfire with NYPD officers during a traffic stop in Brooklyn. Dirty fought the system and won. A grand jury refused to indict Dirty, apparently believing that the cops had acted arbitrarily, starting the issues. But it speaks volumes to Dirty’s hyperreal perspective that he believed in himself enough to do the impossible. One of his greatest lyrics is “Ason, I put planets in orbit, while I be coming with deeper and more shit.”

There’s a scene in the film when Unique gets to Karensville and challenges his cousin, Ramsee Joneson (RJ Cyler, who played Billy Cranston in 2017’s Power Rangers reboot) to a game of basketball. ODB’s song cuts off while they’re parking right before those lyrics. The mind of RZA is so insane if you allow yourself to pursue the “why” to the way he thinks and sees things.

The idea of Wu-Tang Clan itself came from RZA’s fascination with kung fu and wuxia (martial arts fantasy) movies. These Asian films themselves were significantly influenced by American Westerns, particularly in the 1960s and 70s. Themes of the lone wanderer warrior linking up with like-minded wanderers, often for revenge. RZA trained under Shifu Shi Yan Ming, a 34th-generation Shaolin warrior monk, to merge American hip-hop culture with traditional Shaolin Kung Fu. The core of the Shaolin monks’ thinking is that perception isn’t a passive thing. It is a malleable tool that can be shaped to transform one from a victim of external circumstances into a master of one’s own mind, energy, and physical actions—as one with the universe. Dirty boasts in the diss song “Brooklyn Zoo” that he’s the Original Man, “the Sun,” whose gravitational pull he controls with his mind.

I should note that Unique and RJ, as cousins, share a bond similar to that of RZA and ODB. It’s so rewarding to catch mind-blowing Easter eggs like these in One Spoon of Chocolate. The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) was RZA’s first film, which he directed and co-wrote with Eli Roth. A talented blacksmith who makes weapons for a small village has to defend himself and his fellow villagers from those who want his talent for themselves. It’s a homage to the ‘60s and ‘70s Asian wuxia grindhouse flicks that inspired RZA, featuring an all-star cast. But with One Spoon of Chocolate, he’s not only mastered grindhouse, as Ryan Coogler did with Sinners, RZA also remixed and expanded the genre.

For those not familiar with the term, it originated in the 1970s. It refers to American movie theaters specializing in low-budget, adult-themed exploitation films, such as horror, splatter, and kung-fu movies. The name comes from a continuous “grind” schedule. The kind of movies shown in these theatres built a cult following that expected intentionally gritty, low-quality, or controversial B-movies. They’re like shitty movies but on purpose, and there’s an art to it. Get it wrong, and you’re left with just a shit movie.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), and Death Race 2000 (1975) are good examples of these films done right. Quentin Tarantino specifically designed Kill Bill as a high-budget tribute to the grindhouse genre. Particularly Lady Snowblood (1973), with themes of revenge and excessive violence. It’s an exploitation, martial arts, samurai, and spaghetti westerns extravaganza. And Tarantino collaborated with RZA to produce new, original music and serve as its key composer. However, I should add that RZA noted that he wrote the first draft of One Spoon of Chocolate over 13 years ago. And for about six years, Tarantino has mentored RZA on how to get the shittiness just right.

In fact, Tarantino serves as the executive producer for RZA’s gritty blaxploitation-style action-thriller, One Spoon of Chocolate, acting as RZA’s marketing partner for the film. Tarantino himself calls it an “old-school, foot-to-ass, Revenge-a-matic!” One thing, well, two, you can count on Tarantino for: being the torchbearer of grindhouse, and knowing how to use the n-word unsparingly in them. Now, he’s passing the torch to RZA, who’s sampled some Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Ryan Murphy’s signature panache to weaponize genre for social commentary for his American Horror Story franchise.

Paris Jackson has so much B-movie aura, and I sincerely mean this in the most positive way possible. Think Charlize Theron in Children of the Corn III, Angelina Jolie in Cyborg 2, or Jennifer Aniston in Leprechaun. Jessica Biel in the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Well, Michael Bay’s company Platinum Dunes produced that one, and the film was a major commercial success, grossing over $107 million worldwide.

But you get what I’m trying to say, it takes a special kind of actress in a specific time of her career to own these spaces. Besides Theron and Biel, they’re all nepos (nepotism babies), too, and her dad was arguably the most famous man to walk the earth, so she’s nepo royalty. But she’s really earning her way in these kinds of roles. She’s an American Horror Story alumna, thanks to some advice from her godfather, Macaulay Culkin (He has some of the best lines in the entire series. The brutal, exploitative nature of Hollywood and its tendency to consume artists. The industry’s soul-crushing gatekeeping).

Jackson plays Darla, who is the friend of Aretha, who’s portrayed by NAACP Image Award-nominated actress Emyri Crutchfield (Roots, True Detective, and Burning Cane). Aretha is in a romantic relationship with Unique’s cousin, Ramsee. It’s through Aretha that Darla meets Unique and becomes his ally. There’s also Quan “Dap” Norris, played by Johnell Young, known for his portrayal of GZA in Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga.  Young also co-starred with Moore on the series. Moore did a good job portraying Wu-Tang member Raekwon. In One Spoon of Chocolate, Dap is the driver in a breakneck, visually arresting car chase scene under a Karensville full moon.

They’re chased by the Karensville local gang and its very convincing leader, Jimmy, played by Harry Goodwins. And his number two, Jesse, played by actor James Lee Thomas (Bad Boys: Ride or Die), who really delivers the role as a virulent Rust Belt USA in-your-face racist. If you’ve ever been to Metro Detroit (“across 8 Mile”), Pittsburgh (which is 40 miles from Steubenville), or Cleveland, you’ll agree. Though not in the Rust Belt, Central Florida, Virginia’s Charlottesville, and Boston’s “Southies” deserve honorable mentions for inclusive emphasis on the aesthetic.

RZA checked off every box on the post-industrial, tough, insular, in-your-face racist checklist. White boys who can do whatever they want, terrorize whomever they want. Their family and friends have generational roots. They have family in law enforcement. They’re their town’s only bail bondsmen. They own the impound lot. The liquor store, RZA’s vision of a Ku Klux Klan hood in One Spoon of Chocolate, is a Crown Royale-like bag with eye and mouth holes cut out with a little Purge-style festive maniac flare.

They are the town doctor. In fact, when Aretha’s mom questions the wounds on the town’s latest victim, the doctor tells her that, until she goes to school to become a doctor, she should stay in her place if she wants to keep her hospital job. Remember, they rationalize and enforce an “us vs them” mindset for resources by race. And, Black people are the resource.

In fact, Jimmy even says at one point, “The only valuable [n-word] in this town is a dead [n-word].”

There’s no doubt in my mind people will see veteran actors like Michael Harney (Orange Is the New Black) or Blair Underwood (Set it Off, Sex and the City) as Officer Beem, Unique’s New York parole officer, and forget this is a grindhouse aesthetic movie and start talking about plot this and acting that. Wearing their sophisticated monocle to discuss a B-movie, “Well, I went in expecting…you know, Tarantino presents….” Shut up. Like, seriously, just shut up. Tarantino told no lies. One Spoon of Chocolate is an old-school, foot-to-ass, revenge-a-matic. It’s an unflinching satire that serves as both a genre homage and a direct indictment of the very real systemic racism that occurs in Small Town, USA. It’s shitty but on purpose in all the right ways—and highly stylized.

I don’t know if it was Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s sound system, but the sound was amazing. Premium! As a Wu-Tang superfan, I attended a theatre screening of Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga at an Alamo in Staten Island, with RZA and most of the cast in attendance. Young and Moore were there, too. But the sound in One Spoon of Chocolate was different—both intentionally gritty and yet crystal clear. Every punch, kick, stab, clashing blade, gunshot, and bone-breaking, mixed with the music, which includes some Biggie. I think it’s a mix of RZA’s music and a solid sound department (veterans like Greg Hedgepath: Speed, Starship Troopers, Queen & Slim, Straight Outta Compton) that deserves its own star in this review.

Like The Man with the Iron Fists, One Spoon of Chocolate is worth seeing in theaters; you’ll go home feeling like RZA and his wife, Talani Diggs, self-financed film was worth your ticket. Other executive producers include Quentin Tarantino, Joseph Patrick Genier, and RZA’s brother (“gray-area risks” co-financier of Wu-Tang Clan’s rise [superfan knowledge]), Mitchell “Divine” Diggs.

Review: One Spoon of Chocolate (2026)