Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Strike Back: Season Five Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 17, 2018

Does anyone other than the diehard television trivia junkie remember Dan Briggs? For those of you who aren’t diehard television trivia junkies, Dan Briggs was the name of the first leader of the Impossible Missions Force on the premiere season of Mission: Impossible, but when Steven Hill, the actor portraying the character, raised objections to the shooting schedule, one that often interfered with his observance of the Jewish Sabbath beginning at sundown on Friday evenings, Hill left the show, and from the second season on the new if arguably not that improved leader became Jim Phelps, portrayed memorably by Peter Graves. This particular example remains one of the more interesting examples of a hit show weathering a rather substantial cast change, one that Mission: Impossible was perhaps able to do because when you got right down to it, the “characters” of the Impossible Missions Force weren’t all that important, it was the “sting” of the mission and each episode’s often labyrinthine plot dynamics, that made the show really work. There’s something perhaps even more dramatic with regard to Strike Back, which goes into its fifth season with a whole scale cast change, though longtime fans of the series might be at least a little used to this strategy, since the show has shorn itself of supposedly major characters over its previous seasons with a somewhat surprising regularity.

Reviews of Strike Back’s previous seasons can be accessed by clicking on the following links:

Strike Back: Season One Blu-ray review

Strike Back: Season Two Blu-ray review

Strike Back: Season Three Blu-ray review

Strike Back: Season Four Blu-ray review

As I’ve mentioned in reviews of previous seasons of Strike Back, this is a show that positively relishes things going boom, and as such any supposed “character development” is often a passing or at least an interstitial element in otherwise action packed episodes. It’s rather commendable, then, how the writers manage to work both aspects into the season’s start up, one which introduces new focal character Thomas McAllister (Warren Brown), a British Sergeant, whose toughness and ultimate quest for vengeance is nicely detailed in just a few minutes of opening screen time, where he is in command of a mission that goes hopelessly awry in an attempt to retrieve a terrorist and deliver him to the Americans. McAllister and his team walk into a trap, with the upshot being the terrorist gets away and all of McAllister’s charges are killed (in a plot point which may remind some of a somewhat similar conceit in an earlier season featuring another character).

Next up is an American special ops Sergeant named Samuel Wyatt (Daniel MacPherson), who is also on the hunt for Omair Idrisi (Don Hany), the nefarious terrorist mastermind who eluded McAllister’s clutches earlier. Wyatt seems to think he’s getting important intelligence, despite the fact that he seems to have been captured and is getting waterboarded, until McAllister shows up and single handedly frees him. That leads to one of Strike Back’s chief allures, the action set piece, in the case a mad scramble across vast deserts dunes in a variety of speeding vehicles. Wyatt is more or less shunted off on Section 20 (the “Strike Back” force), as revealed in a kind of funny vignette involving Wyatt’s commanding officer, Major General Parker (Corey Johnson), though interestingly there are subtle hints given that there may be more to Wyatt’s assignment than simply getting him out of the Americans’ hair.

Perhaps sending the subliminal message that this particular Strike Back force will not be all testosterone all the time, there are three women in the fracases as well, including the commander, Colonel Adeena Donovan (Nina Sosanya), who is often relegated to the headquarters sidelines. But the two other females, Captain Natalie Reynolds (Roxanne McKee) and Lance Corporal Gracie Novin (Alin Sumarwata) are more often than not right in there with the boys shooting at bad guys and engaging in hand to hand combat. Perhaps for this reason, there’s a little less of the “coed” hijinks that sometimes informed previous seasons of the show (though there is still copious if discreet nudity and sexuality sprinkled through various episodes).

In terms of the episodes themselves, this is another bang up (in more ways than one) year for Strike Back. The early episodes deal with Idrisi, at least tangentially, and also with his perhaps even more dangerous wife (Katherine Kelly), before branching out (in a linked way, though) to larger threats of arms dealing and chemical weapons sales. While Strike Back perhaps unavoidably covers some of the same general territory (geographical and content wise) as the probably more serious minded Homeland, its tendency to go for the gusto and regularly offer a glut of explosions and expertly crafted fight scenes will probably make this the smarter choice for adrenaline junkies. While the supposed “character beats” are once again kind of an almost humorous afterthought, at least given the hyperbolic tendencies of the show in general, it’s to the credit of this still rather engaging series that there are actually attempts to offer some developments along those lines. The good news is that while the faces may have changed, the underlying “kick butt”-ishness of Strike Back remains firmly intact.

Strike Back: Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Strike Back: Season Five is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is another really sharp and well detailed looking season, though one kind of peculiar stylistic choice actually started to kind of bother me after a while. For some reason, the creative crew has decided to really aggressively grade a lot of the desert and/or Libyan material in a rather sickly yellow-green shade that makes the Section 20 operatives look positively jaundiced (you can make this out in several of the screenshots I've uploaded to the review). In fact the grading is so aggressive that facial tones can almost posterize at times. Apart from that intermittently off putting approach, the rest of the season really pops extremely well, with typically excellent detail and fine detail levels, perhaps surprisingly even in some rather dark and/or dimly lit moments. Some of the CGI is a little soft looking at times, but it sure appears that the series used practical effects for many and maybe all of the major explosions that erupt through any given episode.

Strike Back: Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Strike Back: Season Five features another boisterous DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that offers consistently forceful LFE and regular immersion in any number of exciting action sequences. The wide open spaces of desert locales are contrasted rather nicely with more urban moments supposedly in Libya, both of which offer opportunities for well placed ambient environmental sounds. Dialogue, effects and score are all mixed well and prioritized smartly on this very enjoyable and problem free track.

Strike Back: Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• The New Team (1080p; 3:16) is comprised of two short featurettes, Section 20: New Characters and Section 20: New Tactics, each of which feature brief interviews and which can be played separately.


• Strike Back Season Five: Declassified (1080p; 5:42) features three brief EPKs devoted to the three episodes (Episode 41, Episode 42 and Episode 43) on this disc. These can also be accessed separately if you choose.

Disc Two

• Strike Back Season Five: Declassified (1080p; 5:56) features three brief EPKs devoted to the three episodes (Episode 44, Episode 45 and Episode 46) on this disc. These can also be accessed separately if you choose.

Disc Three

• Strike Back Season Five: Declassified (1080p; 9:17) features three brief EPKs devoted to the four episodes (Episode 47, Episode 48, Episode 49 and Episode 50) on this disc. These can also be accessed separately if you choose.

Strike Back: Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are probably some fans who thought Mission: Impossible took a big downturn late in its run after some of the icons of the show like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were replaced by the likes of Leonard Nimoy and Lesley Ann Warren, but the underlying strengths of that show were arguably not that materially affected. The same can probably be said for Strike Back, and the good news is this "new" cast segues into their roles and the often chaotic situations the series offer without missing a beat. Technical merits are solid, and even without much in the way of supplements, Strike Back: Season Five comes Recommended.