Who doesn’t love a good doggie? Arthur the King is a sports adventure drama starring Mark Wahlberg as Michael Light. This true story follows Michael and his group of racers who compete in the Adventure Racing World Series. Along the way, they meet a dog who begins to follow them around. A bond forms between this team and a dog who has never had a home. This movie feels like what you’d get if you mixed your average sports movie with Hachi: A Dog’s Tale. If that seems like a strange combination, that’s because it is. This is not the great film it should have been, and it really could have been something with the right direction.
Michael is established early on as a team leader who does not listen to his team. He is talented but makes the wrong decisions, which ultimately leads to their loss. He also has a complex relationship with his father. After that opening adventure scene, Arthur the King can feel dull. We spend a lot of time with Michael in a very pedestrian series of scenes where he puts a team together. It all feels like scenes that you’ve seen before in other films. The team includes Leo (Simu Liu), Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Chik (Ali Suliman). A scene right before the race features the most sudden cancer reveal since The Room. It’s supposed to be very dramatic, but it elicited the wrong reaction out of me.
The pacing of Arthur the King feels very off. We see bits of Arthur throughout the first half hour, but he doesn’t meet Michael until about half an hour into the film. They barely even become friends until we’re halfway through the runtime of the movie. It’s strange how a movie called Arthur the King can feel so uninterested in its titular character. The majority of the film is a sports movie, and it actually works the least when that’s what it’s going for. There aren’t a lot of movies I can recall tackling adventure racing, and it had the potential to be really exciting.
But this movie isn’t very exciting. Director Simon Cellan Jones doesn’t make the most out of these action scenes. There’s a moment when they have to climb up a steep mountain wearing bikes on their backs. This could have been tension-fueled, pulling you to the edge of your seat with sweaty palms. They could have almost fallen, and then another teammate could have helped. Instead, they simply climb up, and we move on. The movie rarely plays with the danger. There’s one sequence where they have to zipline, and this is where some of that much-needed craziness happens. Even when this happens, it doesn’t work very well. These scenes don’t push the characters into new places emotionally. They don’t face internal conflict. It feels like the most conventional approach to these scenes.
A few shot choices during this scene work. When Jones taps into a fear of heights, it works well. But ultimately, there aren’t enough emotional stakes here to complement the physical stakes. The things that drive the protagonist forward are not compelling. He’s going through this adventure race because he wants to be a winner. The storyline with his father is barely expanded upon. The characters always feel like they need a stronger reason to be out there going through this adventure race. This movie is sorely lacking an emotional pull that can anchor you in and root for them over everyone else.
When conflict inevitably does arise, it feels a bit contrived. And for the majority of Arthur the King, Arthur is not driving the plot forward. The story doesn’t surround him for much of the first half of the movie. It’s only toward the end that the movie puts a greater focus on Arthur. The final act is the strongest of the film because this is where real emotion and drama enter the picture. For the most part, this movie has a low-stakes energy that can be alienating to those unfamiliar with adventure racing. From the start, it’s not always clear how many obstacles need to be completed or what will indicate victory. We know their goal is to be in first place, but we don’t usually see how the other teams are doing in comparison to them.
One emotional core is the brotherhood that arises between Michael and Leo. There are some compelling performances here. Wahlberg and Liu sell their roles very well. Emmanuel is perfectly acceptable. Suliman is giving good work too, but I couldn’t help but sense that some of his lines were ADR. But I suppose another issue is that nobody here is the best they’ve been. No actor is giving a performance you haven’t seen before. They don’t each stand out. The team dynamic ultimately feels like a weak element in this frustratingly mediocre movie that never reaches first place.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
