Smells Like Self-Confidence

By Nancy deWolf Smith 

"Kingdom," which began this week, is set in a mixed martial arts training studio in southern California. Along with exciting if graphic fight sequences and a good soundtrack, it includes unpleasantly crude sex scenes. The closest thing to girl power in the first few episodes comes when one woman asks another: "Is it weird, being a flower in a business of brutes?" and receives the reply: "No, I can be a pretty hard bitch."

Yet there's nothing wrong about a male-centric show when it illuminates its subject. "Kingdom" pretty much does that with an observation by studio owner and former MMA star Alvey Kulina (Frank Grillo): "Most guys run from fights," he says, "because they don't want the answer to the inevitable question that they whisper to themselves: Am I one of the weak--am I one of the strong? Where do I line up in the pecking order?"

Fighters, Alvey notes, thrive on those questions. So now that he has stopped asking himself such things, life has lost some of its meaning.

Fortunately for the story, Alvey's old friend Ryan Wheeler (Matt Lauria) isn't finished asking. He just doesn't realize that yet. Newly out of prison, now in a halfway house and apparently tamed by therapy and drug and alcohol testing, Ryan no longer feels like the MMA monster he once was.

He's still got it, though. Women can tell. Even Ryan's creepy parole officer can't hide envy at the sight of his tattooed charge: "You look like an Iron Maiden poster," he gasps. When Ryan visits the studio--which is managed by Alvey's girlfriend and Ryan's ex fiancée, Lisa (Kiele Sanchez)--the triangle starts its slow, inevitable burn.

Other trouble has already arrived. Early on Alvey was threatened by gangbanger types and laid them out with a few deft moves. They later retaliated by wrecking the body and career of Alvey's MMA-fighting son Nate (Nick Jonas, the pop star, who is a quiet revelation in this role). Another son, Jay (Jonathan Tucker, as the kind of maniac Sean Penn might have played in an earlier era), is fixated on saving his mother, a drug-addicted prostitute, from a pimp with the affect of an IRA provo.

For all the sweat swirling around, almost every character is fleshed out with more than muscles. It smells like self-confidence. Alvey, a former addict and bad father, is now wise enough to recommend the reading of C.S. Lewis's 1942 devil dialogue, "The Screwtape Letters." Alvey's coaching advice seems tough but almost tender, so assuredly does he deliver it. Even Ryan, with "Destroyer" emblazoned on his chest, has an emotional touch so gentle--as with a crazy roommate--that it cracks the stereotype mold.

For some viewers, "Kingdom" will trigger that pesky question: Why are women so attracted to bad boys? Others may see it as a minor version of Showtime's "Ray Donovan"--although "Kingdom" is better compared with the 1955 movie "East of Eden."

No matter. Byron Balasco has created a drama about punching power which can still locate heat and intimacy in the small act of a woman removing a man's boxing gloves. Who can't get a kick out of that?

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