No Limit (1935 Film) Trailer

[Kenya Ahyet]

CNN) -- Am I allowed to say that William Styron has written a pretty lousy screenplay? I sure hope so, because William Styron has written a pretty lousy screenplay. It's for a movie called "Shadrach," and is based on a short story by Styron himself.

"Shadrach" is an earnest Southern period piece, set in rural Virginia during the 1930s, which pretends to deal with the issue of slavery but is actually more about a young boy experiencing his first brush with death. Though it has some significant problems -- the key one being that an ancient former slave is treated more like a sack full of honey than an actual human being -- it isn't a howler. But it's not good, either.

This is something of a family affair. It's directed by Susanna Styron, who happens to sport the screenwriter's last name because she's his daughter. The proceedings look decidedly low budget, but everything is handled with completely unexciting competence.

The countryside is nicely photographed and the Randy Newman-ish music (by wacky underground legend Van Dyke Parks, who's worked with Newman) is often lush. The performances are also generally serviceable, but, oddly enough, the most absurdly false notes come courtesy of the cast's two most experienced members -- Harvey Keitel and Andie MacDowell.

You've definitely seen this kind of thing before, especially if you've ever watched "Hallmark Hall of Fame." Shadrach is a 99-year-old black man (portrayed, in a way, by John Franklin Sawyer) who's returned to the Virginia plantation where he was born into slavery. He wants to die there and be buried next to his ancestors.

Unfortunately, it's now 1935, so the plantation is long gone. The relatives of the slave masters are still there, though, in the form of a filthy clan of white trash bootleggers led by the husband/wife team of Vernon and Trixie Dabney (Keitel and MacDowell.)

The Dabneys are earthy to a fault. Mama drinks beer after beer, cracking the first one open the minute she rolls out of bed. When she's done with the bottle, she casually tosses it in the front yard. Dirty-faced young 'uns of all ages are running around the joint, and even having sex with their girlfriends in the back seat of the family jalopy ... in broad daylight, while it's parked next to the house.

The youngest son is shunned at the local movie theater because he smells so bad. You wouldn't imagine these guys get together with their friends very often for tea and Milano cookies. I'm no soothsayer, but I see trailers, monster trucks, and cartons of Kool cigarettes on the horizon.

The story is narrated (courtesy of the voice of Martin Sheen, apparently channeling Colonel Sanders) by the adult version of a rich 10-year-old boy who's spending an eventful sojourn with the Dabneys. Paul (Scott Terra) is fascinated by these folks, revelling in the revolting hygiene and barefoot daughters while Sheen poetically reflects on his coming of age.

Big Problem Number 1: Novelists like to include as much illuminating voiceover as possible when adapting their own work, never mind that you can plainly see what's happening right in front of you. This doesn't happen all that often in "Shadrach," but, when it does, the ripeness of the verse is pretty embarrassing.

It seems highly unlikely to me that Paul's parents would allow him to spend more than a few minutes with this lice-infested, gutter-mouthed tribe, but you need to witness the proceedings through the eyes of someone who's capable of reflecting on them. So there he is.

His days are taken up with skinny-dipping, eyeing the girls, and shooting marbles with the smelly kid, until Shadrach shows up on the homestead. The old man senses that he's dying, so he's walked several hundred miles from his current home in Alabama to this godforsaken place. (Note to readers who are approaching the century mark: Try to limit your walking to 50 miles a day.)

Big Problem Number 2: Shadrach can barely speak (and barely move), so he just lays there waiting to die while everyone else muses on his life as a slave. I mean it; Sawyer gets maybe two lines of dialogue in the entire film. Only Paul can understand the guy when he whispers in his ear, so Terra repeats everything he says.

The device may have worked in a short story, but you can't exactly build up a whole lot of emotion through a translator. Shadrach eventually turns into little more than a dark-skinned totem. People touch him, then come to unexpectedly worldly conclusions. It's like he's the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Keitel's character, as you can probably imagine, is an ornery cuss. He goes through a spiritual transition pretty swiftly, though, deciding that he's going to bury Shadrach on this patch of land whether the local sheriff wants him to or not. Big Problem Number 3: Keitel is one of those actors who's built up so much credibility over the years, no one will ever call him on his excesses.

Some of his scenes in "Shadrach" play just fine, thank you very much, but I'm wondering where he got his Southern accent from. That goes for MacDowell, too, which is doubly amazing because she naturally speaks with a Southern accent. All of a sudden she's drawling her words like they're being dragged out of a lake after a flood.

"Shadrach" would be family fare, except that the Dabneys are excessively free-spirited with their four-letter words. They don't even use them properly all the time, opting instead to just damn insert 'em wherever the hell they damn please. There's also a shot of a couple of teen-agers hopping out of the car after a quickie and several bare-butt moments during the skinny-dipping. William Faulkner would have loved them Dabneys. Rated PG-13. 91 minutes.

In the beginning of the century, transportation systems helped connect the growing nation. The travelling was primarily by horse or on the rivers, and then canals and railroads. Most roads were dreadful and they mostly served the local needs.

Trains were more efficient for transporting freight, but they could only distribute to more populated urban areas. Trains were a heavy-duty, fast, year-round transport solution, and in time they became the preferred option for commercial shipping. The goods from the rail-stations were distributed in carts and wagons.

With the improvement of infrastructure and development of a number of technologies gave rise to the modern trucking industry. Trucks gained their popularity after installing the gasoline-powered internal combustion engines, gear drives, tractor/semi-trailer combination and change in transmissions.

In 1901, truckers were underpaid and underappreciated. They frequently worked 12 to 18 hours a day, usually seven days a week, for $2 a day. Companies also held them liable if products were lost or damaged.

In response, truckers formed the Team Drivers International Union (TDIU) to secure better wage and working conditions. A year later, the Teamsters National Union formed from members who broke away from the TDIU. However, they decided their requests would be more successful if they worked together.

By 1914, there were nearly 25,000 trucks. August Charles Fruehauf built the first semi-trailer at this year. A wealthy lumber merchant wanted to move his boat around so he requested Fruehauf to make him a semi-trailer. Because he successfully achieved his desired result, the merchant asked for more trailers which lead to the development of the Fruehauf Trailer Company in 1918.

In 1920 the diesel engine was introduced. Diesel engines have exceptional fuel efficiency compared to gasoline engines. At the time, the improved fuel efficiency helped expand the range of trucks. The standardization of truck and trailer sizes also came with power assisted brakes and steering.

In the spring of 1933 the American Highway Freight Association and the The Federated Trucking Associations of America met to speak for the trucking association and begin discussing a code. By summer of 1933 the code of competition was completed and ready for approval. The two organizations had also merged to form the American Trucking Associations. The code was approved on February 10, 1934. On May 21, 1934 the first president of the ATA, Ted Rogers, became the first truck operator to sign the code. A special Blue Eagle license plate was created for truck operators to indicate compliance with the code.

In 1939 Frederick Jones created the technology for portable cooling units. The refrigerated unit initially sat underneath trucks, but was moved to the top when they discovered it clogged from road dirt.

The Red Ball Express was a famed truck convoy system that supplied American units in the race across France. It was named after the red dots commonly used to indicate priority express trains in the United States. The convoy system went into action on August 21, 1944, with more than 6,000 trucks. Seventy-five percent of Red Ball Express drivers were African American.

They delivered an estimated 12,000 tons of supplies per day for 82 days. By the end of November, when the Red Ball Express was discontinued, its drivers had transported more than 412,000 tons of fuel, ammunition, and equipment to 28 different divisions.

The Interstate System has been called the Greatest Public Works Project in History. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and authorized the construction of the 41,000-mile Interstate Highway System.

On first-hand Eisenhower learned of the difficulties faced in traveling great distances. These early experiences influenced on the decision to create an interconnected network of freeway which will allow larger trucks to travel at higher speeds through rural an urban areas.

In 1945 Al Gross invents the CB radio and walkie-talkie. Almost every trucker had one and they used it to inform each other about police activity, to give directions, to ask about nearby gas stations and weigh stations, and just to network, chat, and pass the long, lonely hours.

In 1964 the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) conducted a series of wide-ranging field tests of roads and bridges to determine how traffic contributed to the weakening of pavement materials. These tests led to a recommendation that the gross weight limit for trucks should be determined by a bridge formula table based on axle lengths, instead of a static upper limit.

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