The cast does well with the material, even though the characters are severely underwritten. The image is crisp, clean and minutely detailed. The red filtered appearance of the Martian landscape looks as good as those beautifully photographed scenes that take place on the spaceship. Red is probably the most difficult color to reproduce on video, but on the DVD, every shade of the warm hue is rock solid and without flaws, as is the rest of the pallet. Additionally, flesh tones look quite appealing under normal lighting.
Blacks are pure, plus the image produces an excellent level of shadow detail.
Digital compression artifacts remain out of sight throughout. The Dolby Digital 5.1 channel soundtrack has all the bells and whistles one normally associates with films from the sci-fi and action genres. The split surrounds are especially well deployed during the film's action oriented sequences. Dialogue reproduction is clean and highly intelligible, despite the heavy-duty sonic activity spinning around the viewer. The bass channel is authoritative, which lends credence to the explosions and impacts.