When it comes to man’s best friend, I immediately think of Diane M. Blenke, recent contributor to The Legionnaire. Amongst the Catholic young adults so formative to my late thirties, her and her husband are among those to whom I am closest, indeed among anyone I have ever met in my entire life.  Not to brag, but I was the one who set them up with each other.  Until about a half year ago, they had a dog named Winston.  He was . . . different.  I say this as one of the few people on this planet that Winston apparently could tolerate.  He clearly liked Diane and her family the best, or at least they were the ones he allowed to put a leash on him or let get past his other behavioral quirks.  He was a good pet all the same, and adored by Diane nearly above any other creature that has ever breathed.  If you knew this person, one of my best friends, you would know what an extraordinary statement that is about her.  I thought a lot about Diane and Winston while watching Arthur the King, and the kind of inspiration such people and pets can bring into our lives.  Today’s film is a testament to this fact.

Before we meet Arthur the King, we are introduced to the man he would eventually inspire, Michael Light (Mark Wahlberg).  He is the leader of one of the four person teams competing in a brutal competition that make up the sport known as Adventure Racing.  As the announcer (Bear Grylls as himself) tells us, Michael has come close so many times to crossing the finish line first, but has never achieved the ultimate prize.  During this particular contest, he is driving his fellows hard to get out to a good start.  It turns out to be too hard, as warned by teammate Leo (Simu Liu), and they end up having to quit not long after they start.  A few years pass and Michael is back in Colorado, still training and thinking about the fact that he has never won a championship.  He is trying to fit into society by selling real estate for his father, Charlie Light (Paul Guilfoyle), but his mind is on racing.  His wife, Helena Light (Juliet Rylance), is the one who has to deal most closely with Michael’s restlessness.  While she thinks he should move on with his life and do other things, she also knows that he cannot simply switch off his instincts.  Responding to his anxiety, she gives him her blessing to form a team to make one last attempt at bringing home a championship.  Given how hard he had pushed his running mates the last time, putting together another group of racers is going to take some convincing.  He also needs sponsors to pay for their equipment and training, and this will be even harder.  It is while he is pitching those potential corporate backers that we see him make his pitches to the others he hopes will join him.  The first is somebody familiar to him, a navigation expert named Chik (Ali Suliman), a veteran of the sport but with a bad knee.  Another is considerably younger, Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the daughter of a legendary climber in whose footsteps she is following.  Finally, there is Leo.  He is not Michael’s first choice.  However, since their last competition, Leo has been amassing a large social media following.  The company in-line to financially support Michael will not give any money without Leo.  Thus, Michael must eat some humble pie to get Leo back on his side, but this is what happens.  Despite all this, they still only get half of the funding he sought, which means significantly less time to prepare.  As such, they arrive in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic mere days ahead of the race start instead of the weeks for which Michael hoped.  Leading up to this moment, the film has given us some glimpses into the life of Arthur, the dog.  He is one of many canines that roam the streets of the Dominican capital.  It is a difficult life for this pooch, to say the least, competing with others of his kind for whatever food they can find.  He is an unassuming dog, though a bit of a loner, at one point being chased off by another pack.  As Michael’s team gets to their first stop, called a “transition,” Arthur is there to greet the weary racers.  It is Michael that notices the bedraggled pup, signs of the difficult life Arthur has led all over his body.  Moved with pity, Michael decides to share his meatballs with Arthur, which is fine by with the rest of the team because this is not their favorite food.  If you have ever had any experience with street dogs, you will know that this is the fastest way to their hearts.  Another thing to keep in mind about this situation is the race itself.  It lasts five days, covers nearly 450 miles, and traverses nearly every kind of physically taxing terrain known to man.  As such, you can imagine their surprise when Arthur turns up at the next transition.  Before too long, they have a traveling partner.  Though the rest, mainly Leo, are skeptical of this canine companion, Arthur proves his worth when he keeps them from walking over a cliff in the dark. Arthur goes on to become their unofficial mascot.  Yet, with the race on the line and in the lead with only the last leg to go, which is on kayaks, coordinators tell them that Arthur cannot go with them.  Michael sees his ultimate goal in front of him, but cannot bear to leave Arthur behind.  Thus, when Arthur starts struggling to swim after them, he turns around and fishes the dog out of the water.  This leads to them placing second, but their efforts to save Arthur make them a sensation.  Unfortunately, Arthur’s many injuries and other forms of neglect make it difficult for him to travel to the United States as Michael hopes.  Michael, though, will not take no for an answer.  With crowd funding, he is able to get Arthur to Colorado, and get the care the pet needs to live happily ever after.

Arthur the King stars one of America’s favorite Catholics in Wahlberg, thus you are going to get a double helping of my Catholic analysis in this review.  I bring him up here because I recently began using the Hallow app.  If you are a Catholic like me, your social media feeds likely had one of the clunky commercials they put out to try and get people to download it.  I admit to being put off by it, until one night I was looking for a Catholic sleep aid.  If you think that sounds silly, then I would remind you that many similar programs use Eastern religions to accomplish the same thing.  Why would I use those when I do not believe in them?  At any rate, Hallow is much more than a device to help you fall asleep.  There are two other functions for which I use it, though there are many more.  The first is the Catechism in a Year podcast with Father Mike Schmitz from Ascension Press.  The second is a daily saint prayer.  God works in mysterious ways.  As I came out of the theater, I realized that I had yet to do these daily devotionals.  The saint for the day was St. Joaquina Vedruna de Mas, a Spanish woman born in the eighteenth century.  From an early age, she had the lofty goal of becoming a nun, but her parents thought this inappropriate for her.  She then married and bore nine children, but her husband eventually died defending their country from Napoleon’s invasion.  Upon all her offspring growing into adulthood, she was finally able to fulfill her childhood quest.  The quote from her given today says, “We must not give in to weariness.  We must spend every minute in loving God. . . .  The love of God is the only thing we can possess forever, everything else will pass away.  Love, love, and yet more love, love that is never satisfied. . . .  When we have Jesus in our hearts, we shall have everything else.”  Not only is this a great way of looking at what you need to do in order to compete in such a race, but encapsulates the lesson Michael learns along the way.  Put in a more cliché manner, it is not just about winning, but how you compete.  The love that forms between these teammates as inspired by Arthur is what gets them to the end, whether you are talking about an Adventure Race or Heaven.

Another particularly Catholic thought I had while watching Arthur the King was St. John Bosco . . . ’s dog.  This nineteenth century Italian priest, most notably known as the patron saint of youth for his ministry to children, credited a large gray wolfhound as his protector on a number of occasions, naming it Grigio.  This simply means gray, by the way, but it makes sense since it always seemed to materialize from the fog.  At any rate, it came whenever St. John Bosco was in danger.  The Church has never officially recognized this as miraculous, nor does that really matter.  What we can say is that there are some parallels to the film.  While Arthur is clearly food motivated, I am not sure how else you explain a dog covering so many miles alone, and being on hand to keep them from falling to their deaths, other than Divine intervention.  One does not need the Papal seal to experience the miraculous.  While you should be prudent in what you label as a miracle, the point of these moments is to lead one closer to God.  St. John Bosco saw Grigio as an answer to a prayer, and it helped remind him of Who is in ultimate control.  Despite starring a Catholic, the film does not delve into any sort of religious explanation for what Arthur endures.  Yet, I was worried at the end that Michael would agree to putting down the quite sick Arthur.  Given Wahlberg’s faith, and the fact that this based on a true story, I probably should have known better.  Anyway, it shows that life is worth it, and that God protects it in some extraordinary ways.

If you are susceptible to crying at films that feature pets, then Arthur the King will likely get the waterworks going.  For some, and Diane is among them, this is too much to handle, and that is understandable.  I enjoyed it because I like Adventure Racing, and wish I could compete in one someday.  In the meantime, we have this movie, and Arthur is an added bonus.