It doesn’t take much for a woman to become the recipient of scorn in America. Usually, just pointing out any sort of inequality between the genders will get a girl in trouble. So it was especially easy for the outspoken atheist and “non-conformist”, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, to earn the title of “Most Hated Woman in America” in 1963, when she won a lawsuit that resulted in banning scripture from public schools. Tommy O’Haver’s identically titled biopic, stars Melissa Leo as the brazen woman in question, framing the story around the true crime ending to her life. In 1995, O’Hair was kidnapped, along with her youngest son and granddaughter, and held for ransom. Perhaps it’s because of this that O’Haver and co-writer Irene Turner visited the Coen tonal wellspring in their script. It doesn’t quite succeed in emulating its influences, but it does effectively tell the story of a woman who deserves to be remembered…
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