Strike Back retains its refreshingly simple approach to matters of conspiracy by keeping the action and the characters’ minds on the mission in front of them.
The series veritably crackles with the chemistry between the pair [Damien Scott (Sullivan Stapleton) and Michael Stonebridge (Philip Winchester)], who are propelled each week into the kind of impossible, deadly missions you don't often see outside video games.... Strike Back may be entirely unrealistic, with a storyline that lacks logic, but before the opening scene ends you'll forget about such petty concerns.
The plot--absurd as it is that a handful of people would be alone and in charge of saving the world, or in an encounter between organizations named Section 20 and Office 39--has enough twists and momentum to keep you eager to know what happens next. What’s also cool, and helps further elevate Strike Back in its genre, is the artistic attention to detail.
[The clichés of the counterterrorism action-thriller genre] cohere into something with enough surface plausibility to be more entertaining than insulting.
The action sequences and fights are briskly shot and edited, the supporting cast is acerbically great.... The worst element of Strike Back’s final go-round looms pretty large in the first half of the season. It’s a contrived story line involving Scott’s son, who turns up in Bangkok wanting to get to know his dad.