Max did not speak a word until he was six years old. When he did start to speak it was in complete sentences that were well formed and intelligent. He was extremely good in school and excelled on into adulthood. When he was a teenager Max had a near death experience. He felt that he had died and was in a tunnel quickly travelling toward a bright white light. But he became aware that there were those around him who loved him so he returned from death. But while in that near death state the names of twelve people were given him.
From this moment Max knew that his destiny and purpose in life was tied to the twelve names. Somehow if he were to find all of them the mystery of why he was on earth would become clear.
But life goes on. Max worked at various jobs until he finally found a calling in the making of documentary films. He really enjoyed travelling around, making all the myriad of necessary arrangements, getting permissions for filming and putting the crew in the right places at the right times. Max was very successful and became rich when he formed his own film company. But he was not fulfilled and not happy.
He began to meet one then another of the twelve people named in his early near death experience. As the years wore on he met more and more of them and began to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together. When he met Juan down in Itapa, Mexico and found that he needed to get all the twelve together in Itapa for a meeting on the 11th of August, 2010 and if could succeed at that the twelve would learn of their mission. Max managed to get eleven to come but learned that the twelfth had died of Cancer years ago. However, he had left a journal that was to be revealed to no one other than the one that would contact his family asking for him. That was Max. The journal was to be accompanied by the man’s Mentally Retarded son in whose body the man’s spirit resides. So Max took the book and the retarded young man with him to Itapa.
The twelve received a visit from a disembodied spirit that instructed each to go out into the world and visit each of the holiest places they had ever been in their lives. One of them would discover “The One” who was to be brought back to Itapa in a year. If they succeeded in finding “The One” then the world would be able to begin a new path of peace and harmony without war, strife and eventual extinction. If they could not find “The One” then mankind was doomed. Civilization would continue on its downward spiral into oblivion.
Gladstone gives us a fine buildup to their success and reveals some surprises in the end that I won’t spoil for you. “The Twelve” earns an 8 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
