Short light pulse amplification using the stimulated Brillouin backscattering mechanism is considered. The novel feature is that the interaction process takes place in the strongly coupled regime and therefore the pulse compression is not limited by the ion-acoustic wave period. The mechanism is very efficient due to the large ratio of light frequency to the characteristic ion-acoustic wave frequency. Although large-amplitude ion-acoustic waves are generated and subsequent wave breaking takes place, the fluid and kinetic nonlinearities do not intervene with the amplification itself.