Buster Details

Although he's best known as a musician, Phil Collins actually began his show-business career as a child actor. Here, he takes on his first lead movie role, playing Buster Edwards, one of the gang involved in the Great Train Robbery. Julie Walters plays his wife and they make the most of their roles as loveably cheeky cockney sparrers chirruping away in Acapulco after fleeing London. EastEnders-style clichés fall as thick and fast as the pair's “aitches”, and, while Collins does his best, it's Walters who steals the limelight as a woman missing the comforts of home. Too squeaky clean to be believable, this is an entertaining but fairy-tale view of law-breaking.

"...Easygoing and affectionate....[Collins] is good enough to make audiences temporarily forget his career as a pop star..."