Lots of us are fascinated by tornadoes. Some are even compelled to experience the rush of chasing tornadoes, but few indeed are those who pursue the reckless dream of seeing a tornado from the inside out. Meet Sean Casey, a documentary filmmaker who set out to realize his dream of filming inside a tornado's most destructive and least understood zone. Having mortgaged his house to design and build his own Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV), we watch as he leaves his pregnant wife to spend six weeks in Tornado Alley hoping for a chance to drive the ugliest vehicle known to man directly into the path of a twister.

With 8,000 pounds of steel plating and a bulletproof glass dome for his IMAX camera, the TIV is also equipped with sensors to help measure different aspects of any tornado it encounters -- but Casey is no scientist. That is why he teams up with meteorologist and storm chaser Josh Wurman. With his mobile Doppler radar vehicles, Wurman can help guide him where he wants to be, while Casey can supply him with scientific readings and information he cannot obtain himself.

The setup sounds pretty exciting, but for the most part I found this documentary surprisingly dull. May and June 2005 turned out to be a slow season for tornadoes, and Casey and the TIV miss out on the few chances they have of going where no armored vehicle has gone before. Then, as if it had been written in the stars, the team finally gets the chance they've been waiting for on Casey's very last day. If the filmmakers hadn't told me that the TIV finally met a tornado head-on, though, I would not have known it because the event is surprisingly anticlimactic. The only excitement we get comes in the form of another vehicle that gets closer to the storm than the crew intended and some great shots of the rare occurrence of two different types of tornadoes being generated simultaneously by a single storm.

This is an interesting little documentary, but it's not very exciting at all. That being the case, I would only recommend it to those with a true passion for tornadoes and storm chasing. There are much more exciting videos out there for those with only a casual interest in the subject.