NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

loveagoodstory Despite good acting from a good cast, including Larry Lamb, Julie Walters and Phil Collins, the script is just too slow. The story is almost automatically interesting but a lot of points in it seem to be laboured and use multiple scenes to make the same point For example, 'June doesn't like Mexico' is gone over and over with no subtlety. It couldn't be done in fewer scenes because that part would look rushed, it just needed better- written scenes with more content than just the one point. The incidental music (not Phil's) doesn't really help, sounding like its trying to drum up atmosphere rather than help create it. All in all, it probably deserves a lot of the feeble 'greatest crime is that is got made' jibes thrown at it. Its still an interesting account of the robbery. But it comes from a time when British films started on recent period drama again and we got more and better films thrown our way, such as 'Scandal' and 'The Krays'. That led to 'Heartbeat' and the circle to the dark side truly was complete.

stephen-best I saw that this movie got an average rating of 5.4 from 1700 users. Good grief. The cast alone (Julie Walters +) warrant this before we start. If people miss out because of such a low ranking then its a mistake. I enjoyed it. And watched it again this evening which is how I come to be here. Good cast, true story, good sound track, character, humour and period setting (1963) what more would you want ? It stands the test of time too, not dated - except in the modern computer graphics / explosions genre. And Phil Collins an inspired piece of casting. OK its not as good as the Long Good Friday but that was a cracking film. But Buster is not that far off the mark. A 5.4 average rating is ridiculously low.

TheExpatriate700 Buster takes an extremely interesting subject-the Great Train Robbery of the 1960s-and turns it into a tedious romantic comedy. Although the lead performances by Phil Collins and Julie Walters are good, they are not enough to save the picture.The film's main flaw is that it only deals in passing with the one thing that makes Buster Edwards really interesting-the Great Train Robbery. The robbery itself is dealt with roughly a half hour into the picture. We get no sense of how a small time crook like Buster-a man whose main accomplishment seems to be stealing mannequins from shop windows-got involved with such a major criminal enterprise. Furthermore, we only get the vaguest sense of who the planners of the crime were. At times, I found myself wishing the film had been about the ringleaders instead.Instead, we get over an hour about Buster and his family's time on the run. It isn't particularly interesting, and even comes across as repetitive as Buster moves from one hide out to another. Although the strain on his family makes for some touching moments, it's not enough to carry the movie.The film's "happy" ending especially falls flat, given the real life Buster Edwards's suicide a few years after the film came out. Seeing Buster walk away with his wife, seemingly happy, when the real man was actually an alcoholic haunted by personal demons, is almost heart breaking.The film's one reason to be remembered is for its soundtrack, which features two classic Phil Collins hits. Unfortunately, they only appear at the end of the film.

lespike Just tracked Buster on DVD (for £4 - bargain, or so I thought, more of that later) and gave it a watch today, to be delighted all over again from the last time I saw it, which must have been a few years ago!The film manages to capture the essence of the 60s, and delivers it over to the audience, in a style which I thought was very convincing. Don't listen to your friends when they kick up a fuss about seeing this film because it's got Phil Collins in, ignore it, he can act and does very well in the movie. A mention should also be given to the ever dependable Julie Walters, who yet again gives a solid performance.While on the subject of Julie Walters, I really like the opening scenes in Acapulco (with nice music from Four Tops behind the flying shots over Mexico) as it shows you in an instant that the character of Julie Walters is never going to fit into her environment, as she can be seen wearing dreary colours, a head scalf, thick coat etc and has nothing to match the elegance of the country and it's people. Although Julie Walters can be seen to fit into her forced situation as the scenes in Mexico progress (shown nicely in her choice of clothing I think) you can see she is never really comfortable with it, and her departure back to England was always going to happen.The film also seems to be accurate to the story of the 63 Great Train Robbery, except for two point, the driver of the train (Jack Mills?) wasn't shown to be as serious hurt as he was by the gang, and Buster also slaps his wife in the Mexico market scene, something the real life Buster has been quoted as saying he would never do, or never did such a thing.Still don't let this (or the funny (not haha) ending) overshadow your opinion on the movie, truly is a goodun.Oh and there is a DVD release doing the rounds at the moment, that really is not worth it, as it presents the film in a badly transferred 14:9 image within a 4:3 frame which just looks dull and awful. Go for the proper DVD release in it's glorious 1.85:1 aspect ratio.