Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story

Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story was released in 2020, in the middle of an inspired direction by Play Networks to return to old Nollywood classics and create sequels or remakes of them. The success of Living In Bondage: Breaking Free in 2019, the archetype, no doubt inspired the others, so that Rattlesnake, Nneka The Pretty Serpent, Aki And Pawpaw and Glamour Girls followed in the subsequent years, but with the standards of quality seemingly dropping with each new addition.

Rattlesnake follows the story of Ahanna (Stan Nze). He says in his voiceover narration that there are key moments in a person’s life that have a life-altering effect, and Ahanna has his first when he watches a man get burnt to death for petty theft, in a country where politicians make away with entire budgets to no repercussions. The second comes after he loses his father a few years later, and a third after a similar-length period when he moves to Lagos to discover that his mother—who abandoned him in the village after his father’s death—was now married to his father’s brother, and they may have played a part in his death. All this shapes Ahanna’s worldview on life and especially life in Nigeria: the world is a cruel and uncaring place, and in Nigeria, wealth is celebrated even if it is obtained by illegal means—the only real crime is being poor.

After reuniting with childhood friend Nze (Bucci Franklin) and Nze’s sister Amara (Osas Ighodaro), he learns that Nze owes a debt of 5 million to Smoke, a hooligan, so Ahanna suggests they rob his own uncle and mother to pay it back. That robbery goes awry when Ahanna and Nze end up killing them both, and with nothing else to live for, Ahanna co-opts his friends into a life of crime. They make Ocean Eleven–style recruitments of the remaining gang members, with Egbe (Odera Adimorah) added for his knowledge of weapons and sheer muscular strength, Sango (Emeka Nwagbaraocha) recruited for his very-specific, definitely-not-cliche “Tech Skills”, with Bala (Efa Iwara), a bookseller and acquaintance of Ahanna thrown in the mix as well. They form a group named The Armadas.

Under Ahanna’s planning, The Armadas pull off a series of successful robberies, each more daring than the last, and they form a well-oiled team—even Amara, who hardly gets in on the action herself, can help distract targets with her attractive figure. They continue to amass wealth, fame and infamy, while gathering enemies along the way from both law enforcement and other criminal establishments. Here Smoke makes an appearance as a henchman of Ali Mahmood (Nobert Young), a notorious crime boss. With these forces breathing down their necks, The Armadas will come to a violent conclusion with casualties on all sides, before the film ends with the stereotypical “One Last Big Job”.

This narration of the premise is inexhaustive, but already you can see that Rattlesnake does not rate originality very high on its list of core values. This is in part due to its nature as a remake, but Living In Bondage was a reprisal of a decades-old movie that managed to stay grounded in Nigerian identity—with the concept of Money Rituals helping contextualise the crime drama in a distinctly Nigerian way. Rattlesnake is without nuances like this, so it resembles a rehash of several foreign stories. There’s a bit of Ocean 11, a lot of Money Heist, a sprinkle of the legend of Robin Hood. And Rattlesnake is unable to execute any of these acts thoroughly.

Ahanna is painted as a master planner, but for all his drawing plans on boards and moving chess pieces, the actual heists he pulls do not live up to that planning. The Robin Hood arc is actually a total of two scenes—one where they leave bundles of money for petty traders to discover, and another where they throw notes of cash into the air so the ensuing chaos can aid their escape. These are weakly executed, but it doesn’t even matter—they are worn out concepts anyway. Director Ramsey Nouah makes a small cameo as Richard Williams, from Living In Bondage, but his interaction with Ahanna tries to cram an entire movie’s worth of progression into a single scene and it ends up being an unnecessary addition, save for how it probably ties both movies into the next film in their cinematic universe—The Six.

Where Rattlesnake shines is in its core cast and the dynamics they share. Ramsey Nouah is big on brotherhood and camaraderie here, and it helps that these characters are written decently enough to flesh them out as human beings, even when they do things that offend us, like Nze’s constant switches in mood and his propensity to be the crazy guy. Osas Ighodaro works well as the fulcrum between the two friends, but the writer’s insistence on having her always do the right moral thing robs her character of much depth. It is why her sudden twist in the last arc lands so badly, the writers had given no indication that she was capable of it. Stan Nze has his moments to shine and he takes them well, especially in dialogue he shares early on with his mother and grandmother. The use of Igbo language also provides extra profoundness to these exchanges.

As you go further outside the core cast, though, actor performances drop considerably. This can be explained in part due to casting choices favouring actors fitting the physical descriptions over actual acting chops. It is why Odera Adimorah (Egbe) embodies the role of the ex-military gunrunner so well without needing to actually act out the role, and why Richard Britus (Smoke), aided by very good costume design, looks the part of the menacing villain, but his delivery comes off like a man trying to recall his lines. Over minor issues like these, Rattlesnake is polished with high-level production and direction quality. Cameras move smartly to take in as much of the action as possible, and there are no microphone or sound issues to be found here. In fact, Rattlesnake’s soundtrack is a weighty positive, so be prepared to be revel in some of Larry Gaaga’s best work with Eastern music, while The Cavemen serenade with their fine mix of RnB-Highlife on “Me You I”; it is nice that the music is always well matched to each scene.

Rattlesnake takes itself a lot more seriously than its predecessor, Living In Bondage, did, but in the process it loses a little of the grounded natural feel of character behaviour and progression—compare Ahanna’s sudden switch to a life of crime to Nnamdi’s slow erosion of moral values to descend into the occult on Living In Bondage. It also struggles to land many of the concepts it so glaringly lifted from popular tropes, so despite Ramsey Nouah’s best efforts behind the camera and our core cast’s in front of it, Rattlesnake cannot elevate itself past the mediocrity it so desperately wants to surpass.