This film is a biographical drama about the life and death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair - an outspoken Atheist who was either a troublemaker or a champion for civil rights, depending on your personal perspective. She is responsible for getting bible lessons and prayer banned in public schools in the 1960's and was a controversial public figure for many many years.
Apparently she was kidnapped and murdered in 1995 along with her son and granddaughter.
There was some speculation / accusation that Madalyn used her rise to fame to become quite wealthy using the organization's connections and notoriety to raise money. The film doesn't focus greatly on that, but there is a lot of information that indicates that her non-profit organization had lots of money hidden in offshore accounts (this is touched on in the film - but is not the overall focus.)
Madalyn quickly became well-known for being crude and foul-mouthed whenever participating in public discourse. This included and perhaps was most extreme when she was invited to have debates with religious leaders at the time. She was completely unapologetic about this behavior and her brashness got her invitations to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, which at the time was the biggest stage in the world.
Her disappearance was the source of much controversy, as it was seen as a real blemish on the part of Texas law-enforcement, some suggesting that their lack of interest in finding her might have been somewhat intentional... some going as far as to say that the government was actually in on the act.
Anyway, the film is ok, but to be honest I struggled to stay focused on the story and found my mind wandering quite frequently. I think this is because of the fact that very little is actually known about what occurred during the kidnapping and the bodies were not found until 2001 when one of the kidnappers, upon being convicted of the crime, decided to show the authorities where the bodies were.
Sorry for all the spoilers, but that is why I put the warning in the title. I can't really recommend that anyone watch this because to be honest, it isn't very entertaining until the very end. The buildup to the murders is actually extremely boring since the writers didn't really have much source material to base the dialogue on. The movie relies on constant flashbacks and I suppose this is interesting if you want to see how instrumental Madalyn was in getting religion out of the publicly financed forum in USA.
