The First Omen
The word “sport” doesn’t cut it. Adventure Team Racing is the hardest, most extreme thing in the world. This makes Iron Man, which involves running, swimming and biking, look like hopscotch. There are some essential words missing from this description: running, biking, climbing, kayaking any forward motion that you can think of over every possible kind of terrain that could kill you. Races can go on for days with only short sleep stops and time penalties for things like IV fluids. “Arthur the King” is based on a true story of one of these races; an American team pushes through the jungles and mountains and rivers of the Dominican Republic (the real story involved a Swedish team in Ecuador). Mark Wahlberg plays team leader Michael Light who bonds with a stray dog he names Arthur.
It’s really three movies in one all watchable but don’t always mesh together. The first and least compelling is Michael’s story. He’s a restless character adrenaline junkie maybe or just someone with something to prove after being called “the best adventure team racer never to win a championship,” by “Man vs Wild” host Bear Grylls (playing himself off camera). Michael loves his wife and daughter but hates working for his former military turned realtor dad, he won’t let his legacy be a viral image of his losing team literally stuck in the mud.
No one wants to sponsor him after last time he failed. But with only half the money he needs, Michael puts together a team: Chick (Ali Suliman), navigator, let go from the championship team because of bad knee, Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), expert free climber and daughter of an ailing former champion; Leo (Simu Liu), who posted that viral mud photo social media star still angry with Michael about bad decisions costing them prize in previous race, this time Leo will have voice in team’s direction, Michael promises Lou warns him, “It will be a loud one.”
The second piece of the film is the story of the race: “5-10 days racing the toughest terrain on earth.” With their limited budget, the team cuts back on crucial onsite prep time. They arrive just before the race starts; not enough to acclimate to climate. “First rule is anything can happen,” Michael tells the team; everyone responds with sports-y pep talk aphorisms like “Whatever it takes” and “We accept it. We embrace it.”
First event is a 24 mile trek through jungle. No set path, so one challenge of sport is finding shortcuts through treacherous uncharted terrain. This part of film has beautiful settings (though racers hardly ever take time to look at them) and very exciting sequences including a real nail-biter on a fraying zip line.
And then there’s Arthur abused street dog who improbably, after “not a dog person” Michael gives him a meatball, follows team for hundreds of miles and at one point saves them from running off cliff.
Arthur and Michael are solitary at the beginning of the movie, but as the race goes forward they become friends and later even a family. The whole team’s spirit of “whatever it takes” remains unchanged, however, there is a change in what the human members believe “it” should be the thing worth risking everything for.
Occasionally when Michael talked to Arthur, it seemed like Wahlberg was doing an impression of Andy Samberg doing an impression of him and I kept waiting for him to tell the dog to say hi to his mother. But whatever else might be said about this film, one cannot deny its power. The connection between Michael and Arthur; how Michael takes all his racing car driver determination and transfers it over into fighting tooth and nail just so he can bring Arthur home safe again. I mean damn. You know we’re getting some real Mikael/Arthur footage during those credits.
“A magical finish line,” Michael’s wife calls it his dream. This movie is a reminder that we need to examine our own goals more closely, ask ourselves whether achieving them will truly give us what we want or expect from winning, understand where winning gets us too.
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