Utter Manure

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2000)

CONTAINS SPOILERS!
This movie started promisingly, but went downhill after the first second of footage. After a poor imitation of "Cliffhanger" which we'd all seen on the trailer a thousand times already, we transport everyone to Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Did I mention Sydney enough? Because we're in Sydney, Australia, as evidenced by every shot containing the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney this, Sydney that. The people organising the 2000 Olympic Games must have been sleeping with the director, since the whole thing is just one giant tourism advertisement for Sydney.
Not only is the action all happening in Sydney, but there's a nice helicopter flight to some outback HQ of the agents. For no explainable reason, except to show the Outback. Thousands of expected tourists this year for the Olympic Games, and a major movie just happens to show the tourism sights of Sydney, and a handy shot of an Aussie corrugated iron hut near a sheep shed in the Outback.
It is here that things really go downhill with a real Australian actor putting on one of the worst Aussie accents since Meryl Streep moaned "a dungos gut muh baybee" in the film 'Evil Angels'. Apparently we all get about calling one another 'mate' and 'sport' four times per sentence. Hey, it's a stereotype - quick! Exploit it! We're all yokel Aussies down here, mate! Come visit us! We say 'sport' and 'mate' a lot! I was stunned to see no use of the word 'cobber'.
One of the other exciting things about Australia is the way our soil affects visitors. The female eye-candy role in this film is supposedly from the other side of the world, speaks with a lilting accent, and yet drops in the word 'blokes' when talking to Tom Cruise at the racetrack.
Don't even get me started on the physics behind a motorcycle being rapidly caught by a heavy 4WD vehicle. Anyone heard of the "power to weight ratio"? Certainly not the people making this film... Oh, and of course, we Aussies like to store our dangerous stuff in metal cylinders branded with "hazardous waste" and keep them in bunkers that have large openings to the environment. Oh, and if pigeons want to fly into our secret lairs, that's fine too. "No worries mate" as any Aussie or wanna-be-Aussie in MI2 would happily screech.
To be fair to the terrible attempts at Australian accents, the other accents were equally shocking. The "baddies" kept wavering between German and South African accents, all through the film.
All in all, a dismal waste of time, money and film. I am sure it will go through the roof because it has Tom Cruise and explosions, but still, you've got to worry about a movie when the entire Australian audience cringes aloud in the cinema as an Australian with a bad Australian accent appears on screen. Or when they all break out in laughter at a time when they shouldn't be - in the middle of an "exciting" chase scene and a motorbike is outpaced by something it couldn't be.
The only Mission Impossible here was to keep a straight face at the laughably poor acting, the ludicrous use of Australian icons just to remind you it is set in Australia (did I mention Sydney, Sydney, Sydney yet?), and the overall dismissal of any physics laws for the entire filming of the movie.
Yes, it is supposed to be a bit of fun, and I like movies that suspend reality for a while, but this was a shocker. I went there to watch the film and relax my mind, not to feed it utter manure...