Melissa Leo plays the controversial figure, although she’s often forced to fight through bad, old-age makeup to convey character. We see Madalyn at several key points in her life, but the majority of the film focuses on the kidnapping in August of 1995 by David Waters (Josh Lucas), Gary Karr (Rory Cochrane) and Danny Fry (Alex Frost), a trio of guys who just wanted to get $1 million and head for the border. To say it didn’t go well would be an understatement. Oddly, no one seemed to care that Madalyn, her son Jon (Michael Chernus) and her granddaughter Robin (Juno Temple) were gone. Murray O’Hair had pulled publicity stunts in the past, so the cops didn’t investigate her disappearance, even though her ally Roy (Brandon Mychal Smith) knew that she wouldn’t leave her beloved dogs at home.

Rob went to the press, getting in touch with San Antonio reporter Jack Ferguson (Adam Scott), who agreed that something didn’t look right, and started publishing stories about the Murray O’Hair disappearance. This “investigative” thread is used narratively to allow us into flashbacks about key moments in Madalyn’s life, like her activism for religious freedom and the estrangement from her son Bill Jr. (Vincent Kartheiser), who now runs a fight for religious inclusion in the school system. Perhaps most bizarrely, director Tommy O’Haver uses a lot of clips from Murray O’Hair appearances, such as when she popped up on “Donahue” and “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” A 90-minute film should never include this much recreated footage you could find online.

The fact is that O’Haver and co-writer Irene Turner never settle on an angle from which to tell this story. The history of Madalyn’s life has a direct, then-this-happened biopic style. The film in which Adam Scott appears has a totally different tone, almost an outsider look at a crazy movie that could have worked on its own. And then there’s the most frustrating film of all, the kidnapping tale that feels like it needed to have dark comedy elements like “Fargo” or “Bernie” but just comes off as flat and manipulative. Oh, I forgot one film—the story of an estranged son. This is the most bizarrely melodramatic arc, as if O’Haver thought it would add emotion to a story, but he doesn’t have enough time to devote to it for it to register beyond a cautionary tale on how not use a manipulative score.

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