Arthur the King

The real event: during an adventure race in Ecuador in 2014, the Swedish racer Mikael Lindnord's team gave a meatball to a stray dog by the trail. The dog began following them and finished the rest of the race with them, through jungle, river and the kayak section. Lindnord took the dog, Arthur, home to Sweden and wrote about it in a 2016 book that was published in twenty-three countries. In the film the racer becomes American and the race moves to the Dominican Republic. Lindnord is an executive producer and worked to keep the technical detail right, from the paddle strokes to the markings on the packs. Mark Wahlberg plays the team captain and Simu Liu the most experienced member of the team. Before you watch, know this: the film does not withhold its sentiment, its second half ties its pace entirely to the dog's condition, and what happens to the animal gets hard at a certain point. The real Arthur died in December 2020, after six years with the family.