So much average

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The idea of chart-topping 'Genesis' front-man Phil Collins playing the role of notorious east-end Great Train Robber 'Buster' Edwards was enough to put me off this movie for life. I didn't see it until many years after its release, and only then by accident on television.I have to say that I owe Mr Collins an apology. If he'd not had so much previous form in the pop-charts I'd have hardly recognised him.The so-called Great Train Robbery was the most audacious and successful crime-caper carried out by the biggest team of amateurs in British Criminal history. It naturally suited the authorities of the day to hype them up as a cunning, ruthless brigade of experts, because it helped draw a veil over their own lax security, and profound political embarrassment that the heist engendered. Compared to the vicious, homicidal scumbags of today, these guys were little more than a bunch of chancers. Notorious Big-Man Ronnie Biggs was only involved by invitation as an afterthought. He was a tradesman, but this job offered more.It's a low-key representation of the crime which, I suspect, more aptly represents the bumbling, uneducated behaviour of those involved, who simply got very lucky, and then became extremely notorious. Collins excels as the working-class wideboy, getting in far too deep and never stopping to consider the broader implications of stopping one of Her Majesty's Mail trains, and stealing millions of pounds.His confusion and inability to contend with the juggernaut that follows is entirely believable. Likewise Julie Walters as his long-suffering but doting moll of a wife, torn between what the proceeds could offer and her hankering for an ordinary, stable family life.The culture clash in Mexico is perfectly realised. Untravelled and untutored English homebodies who have never done anything more exotic than pick winkles on Southend Pier, suddenly find themselves in a hot, tropical paradise that actually proves to be anything but. They can't have the food and drink they grew up with. Everything is 'foreign'. They don't\understand the language, the currency; they're confused by everything and everyone. Like true Brits abroad; they don't adapt well. His wife is first to crack, transported away from all of her family and friends, the familiar if drab neighbourhoods that now seem like heaven. The culture-clash is finally shattered open when one of their children sickens and they have no idea what to do or say. They can make no sense of the hospital. Their anxiety and confusion is an object-lesson. For 'er-indoors'; it's the last straw.Eventually, stricken with home-sickness and with finances depleted; Edwards goes back to face the music. The establishment will show no mercy. It's a blatant miscarriage of justice. But it was not the first, nor would it be the last.We finally see him at his flower stall, much older and little wiser. Edwards was a hapless nobody, a small-time criminal prospector who hit paydirt. The Robbery was the second biggest thing he experienced because it changed his life. His wretched suicide much later was the biggest, because that ended it.It's a movie that I found thoroughly entertaining against all expectations, and won over a deeply-held prejudice about popstars taking to an acting career, and using their singing status to leapfrog undiscovered strugglers.

the main body of this movie is Julie Walters moaning to leave Mexico and wanting to go home to England.The rest seems to be about what a wonderful chap Buster (Phil Collins) was and glosses over the facts of the robbery (and assault).That really is all there is to this piece of garbage.The soundtrack is the only redeeming feature and then only if you were a Phil Collins fan.This film is probably why his acting career didn't do much after this.If you can get this free on the front of a newspaper then by all means watch it but otherwise avoid.

Well,the police did manage to make it stick without the poppy,very little was ever recovered but still a few big time and a lot of small time crims got a lot of bird dished out to them.Of the small time crims Buster Edwards has become a tacky legend thanks to the risible hagiographic movie "Buster",a contender for anyone's Worst Ever list. The big time boys,Roy "The Weasel" James,Douglas "Checker" Goody,Bruce Reynolds caught the headlines,lesser lights like Edwards and Biggs swanked in their reflected glory.Time has scythed down most of the train robbers,but it is aposite to point out that had Jack Mills died within a year and a day of their savage attack on him one or more of them might well have been hanged in accordance with the law at that time. Buster Edwards was nothing like Phil Collins.He was a thief who would have stolen the suit from your back(or your tailor's dummy). Robin Hood he wasn't.His wife June surely can't have been as grotesque as Julie Walters makes her,a Victoria Beckham for the sixties. It's hot in Mexico,not like the elephant at all.......there's a surprise. As I understand it Mrs Edwards was right at the front of the queue when nous was handed out.After her initial delight I'm sure she was appalled to see what a silly woman Miss Walters had turned her into. It must have been tough for Buster lying out there in the sun for all that time whilst all us mugs back in Blighty were breaking our backs to earn a living.My heart bleeds. So a dedicated career thug is turned by a popular singer into a chirpy cheeky cockney geezer wot loves his family and didn't mean anyone any harm.Yeah right. Add a few wishy - washy songs and you have sanitised a decidedly murky character,trivialised his crime and treated him as if he was a naughty puppy.Mix in a few spurious arguments about excessive sentences, government interference with the judiciary etc and you have the British film industry's considered take on one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century.Risible indeed.

Not since Olivier kicked the bucket some time in the 80's has a talent of such obvious majesty graced Britain's thespianic firmament. Phil Collins' performance as Great Train Robber Buster 'Buster' Edwards will surely go down in the annals of movie history when the final chapter of that weighty tome is written.From the moment he throws a brick at a window to steal a suit, to the final shot walking along a bridge with that woman from The Victoria Wood Show, Collins holds the attention of the viewer in a way not seen since De Niro's towering central performance in Taxi Driver. Or Frank Spencer's equally towering performance as 'Frank Spencer' in Condorman.Superb ... can't wait for Buster 2: On The Rocks where he hangs himself in a garage.