Hamilton Review

Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical is sung almost all the way through, so its lyrics are its dialogue: dense, witty, rhymed history that turns Ron Chernow's biography into an argument about legacy and who gets to tell the story. The film preserves it with the original principals shortly before several of them left the show, which makes it the definitive record rather than a souvenir.

Leslie Odom Jr.'s Aaron Burr is the performance of the evening, coiled until The Room Where It Happens lets him loose; Renée Elise Goldsberry turns Satisfied into a rewind of a single wedding toast, Daveed Diggs doubles as a motor-mouthed Lafayette and a preening Jefferson, and Jonathan Groff's King George steals three songs while barely moving. Miranda is the least gifted singer among the leads and the most present.

Kail cuts between Andy Blankenbuehler's full-stage choreography and close-ups no seat could offer, adding Steadicam and crane shots filmed without an audience, and Declan Quinn's photography keeps the staging legible. It cannot fully reproduce the charge of the room, and two expletives were muted to secure a PG-13. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special.