Reba McIntire'sThe Hammer (Pahrymp Pictures, The Cartel, Lifetime, 2023)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Afterwards Lifetime showed a much better movie, Reba McIntire’s The Hammer, a sheer delight featuring country singer Reba McIntire as Judge Kimberly “Kim” Wheeler, who after she left the small town of Tonopah, Nevada (which really exists, by the way) and worked her way through law school with a job at a casino, won a reputation as a civil-rights attorney and was appointed by the governor of Nevada to take the place of Judge Brewer, who was found dead in one of the trailers that make up the legal brothel run by Kim’s sister, Kristin “Kris” Wheeler (Melissa Peterman), The original assumption was that Judge Brewer died of a heart attack – presumably after he got over-acted by whoever the prostitute was and what she was doing to him – but a later autopsy reveals oxycontin and rohypnol in his system. From this Judge Wheeler concludes that her predecessor was murdered by someone rendering him unconscious with the rohypnol and then injecting the oxycontin through his big toe. On her first day in court Kim hears the case of a man arrested for bengdrunk and disorderly and urinating in public, and when she’s hearing the case the defendant’s brother (or someone else in court wearing the same red-and-white striped shirt, which was obviously supposed to suggest Tweedledum and Tweedledee) disrupts the proceedings. Judge Wheeler subdues him by taking her court gavel and bringing it down on his head, and someone in the courtroom films it on their smartphone, posts it online, and thus Judge Wheeler gets the nickname “The Hammer.”

During her tenure she takes over the drug court – courtesy of a sexist colleague who thinks that’s the proper set of cases for a woman judge – and she catches a man with the sheriff’s department who’s been blackmailing women in the drug-court program by threatening to fail their drug tests if they don’t have sex with him. Needing a court assistant to keep track of her schedule, Kim hires the young woman who blew the whistle on the antics of the amorous sheriff’s deputy, Eileen Price (Kate Ely), replacing the man wh o had that job for Judge Brewer but quit because he didn’t want to work for a woman. Kim also is hearing the case of the son of Tonopah’s richest man, Bart Crawford (Ray Linn), who’s been charged with murdering his best friend in a drunken brawl/ Her first hearing in the case is on a motion by the young man’s defense attorney to have the case dismissed for lack of a speedy trial – she calls his bluff by saying she’ll start the trial that Monday – and eventually she brokers a plea deal under which the younger Crawford will serve two years in prison and attend anger-management training. Bart Crawford actually supports this on the ground that being held to account for his actions will make a man of his wastrel son, but Bart’s ex-wife Charlene, the boy’s mother, is incensed at the thought of her son going to prison.

Eventually it turns out that she was having an affair with Vance White, the bartender at the local hotel (which Bart Crawford owns), and she got him to murder Judge Brewer for her with the promise of money and sex as the lures. Vance kidnaps Judge Wheeler and forces her to drive them to a deserted barn where he pals to do her in, though at the last minute she’s rescued by Sheriff’s Deputy Wayne (the cute, if rather dorky, Matt Kennedy) after she deliberately crashes her camper – a converted pickup truck with a custom-made shell she designed herself and in which she lives – into a convenient hay bale. What I most enjoyed about Reba McIntire’s The Hammer was the sheer perfection of Reba McIntire’s performance. Yes, it’s true this is a custom-made role for her, and as Charles said afterwards, “I wouldn’t want to see her in King Lear,” but she’s utterly marvelous in this. She acts with take-charge authority, and for the inevitable tag scene at the end she, Eileen and her bailiff, Jo (Jill Morrison), end up at a karaoke bar at which, though Kim protests that “I only sing in the shower” (whereupon someone in her party says, “Well, then, take off yoru clothes and pretend you’re in the shower”), Kim whips out “Girls’ Night Out,” a famous hit for the real Reba McIntire and the song she used to lead off a major concert tour she did with Martina McBride and a whole bill of women country artists in 2001 (https://www.cmt.com/news/nl8yzf/mcentire-mcbride-celebrate-female-camaraderie-at-girls-night-out-opener). I hope Reba McIntire’s The Hammer becomes a TV series – it’s a sheer delight in its mix of comedy and thrills and a great showcase for Reba’s acting chops and her vision of female solidarity.