THE FILM version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2016 stage musical Hamilton — a tribute to American founding father Alexander Hamilton — is an exquisite adaptation from stage to screen.

Performed mainly by black actors, it’s particularly effective in counterposing individual performers in close-up at key moments as they commit to rebellion against the British during the American revolution of 1775-1783 with shots of the ensemble’s frenetic energy during song-and-dance numbers — a mix of rap, hip-hop and R&B — as the young country struggles to be born and to exist.  

The hip-hop music is at times somewhat flattened out as it accommodates the Broadway musical idiom. Yet the lyrical mastery of the perpetual rapping opens up the possibilities of not only what but also how much can be said, providing a dense layer of non-stop rhyming and energy that reinvigorates a staid musical tradition.