Bigga Than Ben

I first heard about "Bigga than Ben: A Russian's Guide to Ripping off London" in the The St. Petersburg Times while living in Russia two years ago. The movie is based on a book of the same title (now out of print and impossible to find) by Sergei Sakin and Pavel Tetesky. The book was somewhat of a cult hit, and was criticized in England for encouraging people to defraud the system and telling them exactly how to do it. Sakin and Tetesky fell apart after the book was published and seem to disagree over who even wrote some of it, but it was definitely co-authored.

Leaving Russia, Cobaka and Spikker are amazed by the material wealth of England, but also daunted by the task of establishing themselves in London. We follow them through their various misadventures, some of which are hilarious. The story never builds to a big climax, but I think that would have been unrealistic. The film stays true to its roots and its gritty low-budget look fits the story well. The only thing I found wanting was information about their scams and how they pulled them off - for instance the book supposedly contains a lot of calling card scams that weren't really in the movie.

This movie is cheap, short, funny, and good. Its a great film for any English-speakers who also speak Russian or are interested in Russia. And above all, Andrei Chadov (if you haven't see ZHIVOY, run, don't walk, to your video store and get it) and Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian), both put in awesome performances. They have a great chemistry and I can't imagine better casting for these roles - they also look a lot like the real-life duo, who are shown in a photo during the end credits. I'm hoping for Bigga than Ben 2!

The only reason I watched it is because Oxxxymiron (Russian rapper) named one of his songs "Bolshe Bena" ("Bigga Than Ben"). Seems like the only reason he called his song that way is because he grew up in London, and the movie is set there as well - that's where the similarities between the movie and the song end.

Nonetheless, the film is able to stand on its own. I watched it more than 10 years ago on my old Nokia with a 320x240 resolution, so I don't remember much, but I still recall the overall vibe. The atmoshphere of loneliness and uncertainty was seeping through the little screen. I remember that I could feel by my skin the struggles of an emmigrant's life. So, if even a decade later I still remember how the movie made me feel, it must have done something right, what do you think?

On occasion, a low budgeted British film which was released on limited release is a thing to get excited about, and is a usually time to enthuse people to go after it in seeking it out - on the occasion of 2007's Bigga Than Ben, not so. Based on a 1999 memoir of two young Russian men whom arrive in London to hit it big in a Capitalist nation, the film is a meandering; self-conscious piece of unfunny comedy combined with uninteresting rags-to-riches story-telling delivered through an annoying pseudo-documentary aesthetic. The film is a hopelessly misjudged failure; an inept and brutally annoying feature about two of the most unlikeable characters you'll see grace a a British film - 87 minutes has rarely felt as long as it does here. Want I wanted out of Bigga Than Ben was an interesting mediation on life in England from the perspective of an immigrant; how one's identity or life dramatically changes given such diverse jumps in culture and, on occasion, political mindsets. What I wanted was something in the vein of 2007's Brick Lane, what I got was an odd amalgamation of Eastern Promises melded with Dumb and Dumber.

Suzie Halewood's film covers the misadventures of leads Cobakka (Barnes) and Spiker (Chadov), two louts whom arrive in London from Moscow to get rich quick away from their far poorer homeland. One would hope that the sorts of things those who wrote the book have admitted to here have since spawned visits from the constabulary; here, most of the criminal acts the lads are forced into turning to are given a jovial and bouncy facelift for the sake of cheap laughs at a mawkish pair. They crash land in what they refer to as "foggy albion", local friend of a similar immigrated ilk Artash (Matesan) holes them up in a small shed within the boundaries of a rich person's house as sharp angles looking directly up at a number of tall structures and pieces of iconography from ground level provide a sense of this very much being a low level look at life in London from the worm's point of view.

Their travels are punctuated by their voice-overs in thick eastern European accents informing us on where they stand, their voices telling us in fairly decent English exactly what's going on as they struggle with the language within the film creating an odd contradiction of linguistic ability. If the narration is from the future, post-misadventures, then that drains whatever very little suspense there is prior to the getting to the finish line. A continuous updating of their cash situation to annoying cash register noises is also apparent, working the first time before wearing out its welcome; an idea the film itself appears to tire of before dropping completely. With London their oyster and money seemingly to be made every-which way, thus begins the tale of these two people delivered under a canopy of lively, jovial, knock-about crime comedy frills in the form of a mock self-help video. In short, it falls hopelessly flat with very little of anything achieved. The film's title is particularly grating, the dropping of the 'e' and the 'r' for sake of an 'a' immediately draws our attention to a self-conscious sense of being "hip" without, I don't think, a hint of irony.

There appears to be this central tract to proceedings which reads something along the lines of the expecting of the audience to get behind these cocksure immigrants whom are coming over and wanting to rip off British natives in an attempt to win big. When everything goes haplessly wrong, the film ill-thinkingly expects our sympathy. It's unfortunate that the majority of people who'll now come to view the film a few years after its release are doing so in the current climate of problems linked to immigration and unemployment; Bigga Than Ben coming to more presently resemble a really misjudged novelty idea that asks us to respect the treating of job hunting and money garnering beneath this canopy of light crime infused comedy led by a pair of idiots.

Halewood struggles with whatever narrative, if any, was embedded within the text she's adapting; the two leads are caricature non-events breezing their way through a piece seriously lacking in any kind of insight or plot. They hop from scene to scene, robbing; thieving; fare dodging; drinking and wanting to get involved with women, none of it really mattering in terms of the order of it playing out with the gradual bringing of everything around so as to demonise the actions of these two landing heavily when drug addiction and the missing of a girlfriend back home appears to sabotage their dream. It's difficult to take a film entitled Bigga Than Ben seriously; even more-so, one which asks us to weep for bawdy immigrants arriving in a nation expecting everything and getting nothing. Little is done to round the characters; very little of any interest is said and the wallowing in the sort of content for the first two thirds before cheaply rounding everything off in an act of obligatory confirmation in the mould of: "by the way, none of the above is recommended" just confirms what a dramatic dead zone the whole thing is. The film is decidedly much Lessa Than anywhere near slightly interesting, as it whittles away centralising on two people Thicka Than any two short planks you're willing to nominate.

Best friends Cobakka and Spiker are two self-confessed 'pieces of Russian scum', who decide to dodge the draft at home and instead head to London to rip off England – or 'foggy Albion', as Russians apparently like to call it.

Based on Bol'she Ben, the best-selling diaries of Pavel Tetersky and Sergei Sakin, Bigga Than Ben is a low-budget, un-PC black comedy about two young Muscovites who couldn't care less either about confirming or challenging stereotypes about immigrants – but who end up doing both.

'Shameless? Yes. Greedy? Yes. Fraudsters? Yes!' gloats Cobakka. He and his partner in crime have a simple plan when they come to England: set up a bank account, get a chequebook, start raking in money by cashing dodgy cheques, then go back to Moscow – Cobakka to start a band, Spiker to marry his girlfriend.

While they don't mind being seen as petty criminals and fraudsters, the two friends don't take well to being mistaken for 'asylum seekers' or 'refugees'. The streetwise twentysomethings may be mixing with lowlifes, but they don't want anything to do with the huddled masses. They want to live it up, cash in and make it big.

But what would a comedy about two young, freeloading Muscovites in London be without an adventure that doesn't quite go according to plan? The two Russian luck-seekers seem like a tabloid sub's wet dream. 'Russian welfare tourists come to London to rip off the system and sleep with our women' might be the headline for their adventures.

But despite their optimistic belief that the presumption of innocence in the English legal system will work in their favour, 'the system' turns out to be a bureaucratic quagmire and everything from getting a meal at a homeless shelter to opening a bank account and flirting with English girls is a trial. To get a chequebook you need a bank account. To set up a bank account you need a proof of income and a utility bill. For that you need accommodation. But to rent a flat you need a job so you can afford the deposit. To get a job, you need a work permit… And so on.

Until Cobakka and Spiker manage to lay their hands on the magic money tickets – chequebooks and cashback – the two illegal immigrants busy themselves with fine-tuning their skills in shoplifting, sofa surfing, turnstile hopping and heroin cooking.

They hook up with Artash, the son of a Russian oligarch who, in Cobakka's and Spiker's minds at least, speaks English in an 'Oxford accent'. Artash teaches the scamming rookies some basic lessons in small-time crookery and introduces them to every drug known to London.

Apart from intermittent moments of happiness wandering around London's grand tourist sites and sunbathing on Primrose Hill in the affluent suburb of Hampstead, the two friends find themselves scraping at the bottom of London's multicultural melting pot. After sleeping rough in a garden shed, they move into a stinking flat in a high-rise council estate. No amount of scrubbing of the carpets and wallpaper, which appear not to have been changed since the 1970s, can remove the stench, which the guys conclude must come from the Asian curry houses and market stalls outside.

At the start, they are unapologetically racist, but after cleaning toilets, cooking and getting stoned with people of all nationalities, their minds seem to broaden. 'How could I ever have imagined that I, a Moscow hooligan and Nazi, would become a Negro lover?', Cobakka asks in wonderment.

Some people argue that the most ferocious opponents to immigration are immigrants and descendents of immigrants, and that most racist tension is found among ethnic minorities. A couple of years ago, the then chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, complained that East Europeans are bringing with them '1950s attitudes' towards black people.

On the surface, Bigga Than Ben appears to confirm Phillips' stereotype, but in the end it shows that the tensions that exist between those who inhabit the crowded and unglamorous side of London stem from people living cheek-by-jowl in poor conditions rather than being a consequence of immigrants' unreconstructed, racist worldviews.

The DIY, MTV feel of this fast-paced and gag-filled film is entirely appropriate for a rough guide to how to not make it in London. At times the film's knowing style is grating – as when the plot is interrupted by characters explaining the various goings-on to the camera. But a highlight is Cobakka's and Spiker's bamboozlement in a meeting with a thickly accented Irish employment officer. They can't understand a word of what the man is saying ('Do you two speak English?', the employment officer demands impatiently. 'Yes. Do you?' reply the Russians.) Eventually Cobakka and Spiker ask for subtitles, and it becomes clear both to them and to the audience what the man is on about.

Bigga Than Ben bears little resemblance to the celebrations of multiculturalism we have gotten used to, but despite being an irreverent satire it is perhaps a more honest look at interracial London and how many immigrants fare in Britain. It also gives the lie to myths about Britain being a 'welfare magnet' where illegal immigrants can get rich by ripping off the system.

by Nathalie Rothschild -- Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of spiked.

Perfect mixture of speed, fun, drama, crime, heart - it reminded me a lot of Trainspotting ( and a bit Lock Stock and two smoking barrels) but in an own, unique way. I had great fun watching it. Very original and yet very appealing/well-done. This was the movie I saw Ben Barnes for the first time and I was happy he had success and got bigger roles later (even if he was not soo convincing as Prince Kaspian/unfortunately his biggest role/the role most people know him from), he truly has potential!! The film may not be completely politically correct and may dwell on (or play with) some clichés, but it does it in such a funny, witty way that you do not mind. If you are open to something that is not the usual (boring) mainstream, give this a chance.