ARTHUR THE KING - Mark Reviews Movies

Arthur the King, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 14, 2024

It seems unlikely that many will know about the sport of adventure racing, or maybe that's just the cocoon of movie-watching talking. Either way, Arthur the King provides an exciting introduction to the multi-discipline competitive sport for a broader audience, while also sneakily developing a far more familiar tale that, when done well, is about as affecting as stories can get. The part of this story that's about a man and his dog is fairly effective, too.

The weaving of these two threads in Michael Brandt's screenplay (based on a non-fiction book by Mikael Lindnord, the Swedish inspiration for this Americanized adaptation) isn't seamless, to be sure. That hardly matters, though, while watching acts of impressive endurance and reckless derring-do or, when the story does finally revolve around our protagonist and his four-legged friend, witnessing how these two have come to depend on each other. These are very different modes of storytelling, obviously, and the simple trick of director Simon Cellan Jones is to embrace the inherent strengths of both and trust in the visceral or emotional impact of each one.

The racing section definitely works, as we meet Michael Light (Mark Wahlberg), a professional adventure racer who has never been part of or led a team that has won the world championship. Much of his coming-up-short is on account of Michael's prideful stubbornness, and a prologue shows him going completely in the wrong direction, despite the good advice and protests of teammate Leo (Simu Liu). After Leo snaps a picture of his team captain and his kayak stuck in the mud, it seems the legacy of Michael's decades-long career will be of embarrassment and failure.

That can't stand, of course, so a few years later, Michael is preparing to participate in another championship. There are few hurdles, obviously, such as the fact that few racers want to work with him and even fewer corporate sponsors would even consider giving a team led by Michael the funding to train and compete.

It all mostly works out, as Michael enlists Leo (after an apparently sincere apology), expert climber Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), and navigator Chik (Ali Suliman) for the race and receives just enough money to show up in the Dominican Republic a few days before the competition begins. This isn't nearly enough time, considering the tension between Michael and social-media star Leo, Olivia being distracted by a family crisis, and Chik's injured knee not acclimating to the terrain and change in climate. It'll have to do, though.

All of this is established concisely and with just the right degree of foreshadowing, but those who care about a dog showing up here are probably wondering where the pooch is during this exposition. The dog is a stray in Santo Domingo, looking for scraps of food, trying to find a safe place to sleep, and evading more vicious strays and unforgiving humans while trying to survive.

At some point, it's injured off-screen, and escaping the terrible conditions, it makes a trek into the jungle. That's exactly where Michael and his team will be running, hiking, climbing, riding bikes, and canoeing for ten days and more than 400 miles to the finish line.

As understandably difficult as it may be for some, forget the dog for a moment. There is the race itself to consider, and through a series of individual sequences and a clear eye on the long game of the competition, Jones has assembled a dramatization of the race that doesn't feel like an extended montage. Instead, it takes us stage by stage—from the long walks over rough terrain, to smooth or off-road bike rides down paved hills or through the jungle, to neck-to-neck paddling down a river—and only breathes for the teammates to clash heads or bond over the physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting task at hand. One sequence which involves a shortcut of climbing with bikes on the team members' backs and an abandoned system of ziplines, is especially harrowing when the line frays, leaving one athlete dangling from a vertigo-inducing height.

Okay, here's the dog part of the story. The dog, which Michael names Arthur for its kingly manners and patient attitude, starts following the team, particularly the leader, after Michael feeds the starving stray. The dog helps the team find their way to shorter routes, saves their lives in one instance, and keeps going, no matter how hungry, tired, and sick it may be. In the pup, Michael finds a kindred spirit, suffering but unrelenting because it's just in both of their natures.

Arthur is a very good dog, indeed. Maybe it's simplistic to say that such is enough for this element of the narrative to work, but it does. We can tell in simple terms, too. The race against the clock and the other teams of the competition becomes a different kind of race against the clock for Arthur's fate. Yes, this means Brandt's screenplay sacrifices every other human or competitive angle of this story to focus its attention on Arthur and Michael's determination to save the pup, but what else does or should one expect of a story about a man and his dog?

Arthur the King may tell two very distinct stories, and if that narrative juggling act isn't entirely successful, who cares, really? The sports story is somewhat novel and often stirring, and the dog story is as heart-warming as it needs to be. Who needs anything else from a film like this?

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