TV review: The Kick - a fine bromance

David De Lautour played Stephen Donald "with aw-shucks realism".

The telemovie about the unlikely hero of the 2011 Rugby World Cup might have stuck to formula, but it still came away with a win

It starts, as all great tales of redemption should, with the All Blacks standing under their posts and some Wallaby smartass lining up a match-winning conversion.

Tonight's The Kick on TV One ably tracks Stephen Donald's journey from All Black discard to hero. Before the cameras had even rolled, this tale was in the pantheon of All Black legend, carved into the marbled walls alongside Buck's nut and Kevin Skinner's fist.

The bare bones are well known: Donald (played with aw-shucks realism by David de Lautour) has a shocker in defeat in Hong Kong in 2010.

He's ditched from the All Blacks and mocked by supporters ("Donald ya homo!" yells a genius from the crowd in Dunedin) and comes back a year later in his country's misty-eyed hour of need to land the penalty that... oh, you know the rest.

The filmmakers wisely stick to the formula and the true-to-life story.

There's a beautiful girl, Alex (Rachael Blampied) from the horsey set, but the real romance in this flick was of the bromance kind: Donald and Richard Kahui (Clinton Randell).

They support each other, cheer one another along and watch - and play - footy side by side. "Looks like you might have dodged a bullet there, Beavs," says Kahui as the pair sit on the sofa watching 2007's Disgrace of Cardiff (Donald had earlier been dropped from the All Blacks wider training squad for the World Cup).

They're proud of one another's successes; allies in disappointment. Happily, the pair are selected for the All Blacks together.

But while Kahui becomes a first-choice selection, Donald is discarded.

His manager urges him to cash in with a lucrative European contract: "What's it going to be? The money or the Blacks?" Of course he stays loyal.

There are little in-jokes for rugby tragics ("I've got my eye on a kid from Papakura," says the Counties NPC coach. "What's his name?" "Kieran Read." "Never heard of him.") and clever recurring themes like the ritual of Graham Henry's phone calls to dumped players and the humbling experience of twice returning your free All Blacks car (a Ford, in case those of you playing product-placement bingo missed it while sipping on your Powerades).

"The drama really kicks off when Dan Carter hits the deck like a zebra wandering into a Crusaders' team-building exercise:

Other details are bang-on, like Donald's high-knee running style as he makes one of the All Black's few clean breaks in the 2011 final; even the red-and-green jerseys of Waiuku make an appearance.

The whitebaiting scenes are beautifully evoked and the filmmakers do well to work in live-match footage with scenes of the actors.

The drama really kicks off when Dan Carter hits the deck like a zebra wandering into a Crusaders' team-building exercise. From there, the nightmare run of No 10 injuries is well known - Colin Slade and Aaron Cruden limp out of the campaign. Cometh the hour, cometh the national pariah.

Ah, happy memories. Donald delivered. We all cheered into the night.
The ending was, oddly, a little flat. Blame Thierry Dusautaoir. If the French captain had enough narrative awareness to score his nerve-shredding try before Donald's penalty rather than after it (putting France 7-5 ahead), then the telemovie would have had a truly astonishing finish.

They could perhaps have made more of the loneliness of the international kicker; the internal processes and doubts that weigh on every top-flight kicker and the hours of solitary training.

But this by-the-history-book tale was - like Donald - up to the occasion.

Donald's story is one of duty and diligence, and this retelling of the fable was worthy tribute.