‘Arthur The King’: Mark Wahlberg’s Excellent K9 Adventure

The true story about a racer and his dog that became the new film Arthur the King, began with meatballs … Swedish meatballs.

Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord wrote the 2016 book Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home, about an extraordinary friendship he had with a stray dog during a race in Ecuador.

Here’s the real man (and the real dog):

What’s Arthur the King About?

In the Americanized film version — hitting theaters on March 15 — directed by Simon Cellan Jones from a screenplay by Michael Brandt, Catholic actor Mark Wahlberg (Father Stu) plays Michael Light, an adventure racer who can’t seem to make it to the finish line first.

(For those who don’t know, adventure racing features teams competing in a variety of outdoor sports and disciplines, over long, rugged courses in far-flung regions of the world.)

Desperate for one last chance to win, Michael convinces a sponsor to back him and a team of fellow racers (Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman) for the Adventure Racing World Championships, through the jungles, mountains and waterways of the Dominican Republic.

This means leaving his supportive wife (Juliet Rylance), a former racer herself, and daughter behind.

Real-life adventurer Bear Grylls narrates the race. Paul Guilfoyle also stars.

But, early on, a wounded, shaggy stray dog approaches Michael, who feeds him some meatballs. After that, the dog inexplicably attaches himself to the team, following along on the grueling 435-mile race.

Michael nicknames him Arthur the King because of his calm, regal demeanor — and the dog teaches them all something about courage, perseverance and loyalty.

Canine actor Ukai, who bears a striking resemblance to the real Arthur, steals the show, doing almost all of his own stunts.

Talking to the Director

I sat down recently with director Simon Cellan Jones, and here’s some of what he had to say.

On Ukai:

We did have three dogs with us, but Ukai was in almost every single shot. He was the main guy. We found, or they found, a great dog for us, and that started the movie off in a really great way.

Our real dog had genuine acting ability. There’s almost no CGI in it. We didn’t do that much trickery.

Sometimes we had a bit of food for him, of course, but Mark Walhberg did a lot of work with the dog, and spent some time before we started shooting and while we were shooting, and that played off really well.

What is the heart of the story?

We have a scene early on in the film where Mark’s character first meets the dog, and then we don’t see him for a while after that.

Again, the audience will decide, but I hope that they see there is some weird meeting of minds, even though, one’s a scruffy, almost like a Tramp-like dog, a homeless dog, and the other is a sort of crazy endurance runner, who is obsessed with winning.

But they do catch each other’s eye and something lodges.

It’s a dog with a lot of patience, and a lot of determination, and with kindness. I very much believe that animals can have kindness and love and all these things. I think in the movie and, indeed, in real life, it’s a special dog.

There are some very tense scenes, including a heart-stopping trip across a rickety zipline over a massive chasm. Was that real or CGI?

The team decides to legally take a shortcut to try and gain some time in the race, and they do this by taking a risky approach of traversing across a very clearly abandoned, rusty old zipline set up.

It’s joyful at first, and then something goes really, really wrong, and the thing that made you stressed happens. That was tough, because, basically, most of that was done for real, with the real actors.

Mark Walhberg was literally stranded literally 500 feet above the forest floor on a zipline for 40 minutes, while we zoomed around filming with drones and cameras.

Believe me, I think his fitness regime really came in handy on this movie.

Is Arthur the King Good for Families?

Arthur the King is rated PG-13 for some language, and I can attest that a few of the scenes had me very nervous (and I used to love watching the real Eco-Challenge race on TV back in the day — more on that here — so I’m not unfamiliar with adventure racing).

Although Wahlberg is a very public and vocal Catholic, that’s not the character he’s playing here. Faith doesn’t really come into the plot, but there are strong pro-family and pro-marriage messages woven in.

While it certainly will tug your heartstrings, Arthur the King manages to avoid tipping over into sentimentality, and that’s not easy. The adventure-racing sequences and the peril the people and dog are in might disturb younger kids, so I’d keep this one at mature middle-schoolers and up.

But if you love outdoor adventure, and you love dogs, Arthur the King might just take the cake (or the meatballs).