Review- Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story (2020)

After so much anticipation, "Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story" which is a remake of the 1995 classic "Rattlesnake" premiered on November 13th. The Ramsey Nouah film follows Ahana Okolo (Stan Nze) who decides to steal the life he had always wanted. He does this by assembling a team consisting of Nze (Bucci Franklin), Amara (Osas Ighodaro), Bala (Efa Iwara),  Egbe (Odera Adimorah) and Sango (Emeka Nwagbaraocha). Together, they plan and execute heists but when their biggest heist turns deadly, they all have to decide who and what they stand for. 

    I only saw Amaka Igwe's "Rattlesnake" a few days before seeing Noah's and it was almost impossible not to make comparisons while watching the remake. 1995's Rattlesnake had a storyline I found very interesting and with this remake, it lacked greatly in the writing department. The screenplay was very poor and you could literally tell what the actors would say in most of the scenes. They were so many popular faces in this film that it became so hard to keep up. A lot of them had no business having character posters because it gave the impression that they had bigger roles in the film when in reality, they only had 1 or 2 scenes. I cringed when the extremely obvious product placements & promos took place in most of the scenes with the Amstel Malta promo starring Norbert Young and Elma Mbadiwe taking the award for "most cringe worthy scene".

   There were a lot of plot holes, it seemed like a few scenes were missing and there was little to no character development. I never understood what The Armadas were going for with all the heists. Were they just robbers trying to make quick money or they were trying to be like Robin Hood? The story seemed all over the place and it lacked proper flow.

The actors all did amazing jobs with bringing their characters to life but Bucci Franklin (Nze) stood out in every single scene and together with Stan Nze's "Ahanna", they were able to make the movie a bit more interesting and memorable. I loved the soundtrack and Muhammad Atta did a good job with the cinematography. The shocker was definitely Ramsey Nouah's Richard Williams showing up out of the blue to speak to Ahanna. It's obvious Noauh is creating some sort of universe and I'm very eager to see how he'll tie these story lines and characters together.

Rattlesnake had so many elements that could have made it more memorable than it was but the poor writing made it a bit frustrating to watch.

RATING 6.5/10

DIRECTOR Ramsey Nouah

STARRING Stan Nze, Bucci Franklin, Efa Iwara, Osas Ighodaro

RELEASE DATE November 13th, 2020