Chadwick Boseman is a great actor.
That’s no longer anything the world needs to discover.
Yet a funny thing happens whenever I get into a conversation about him.
I always ask the person I’m talking to if they’ve seen “Get on Up,” and the answer, almost inevitably, is, “No, I missed that one.” Which never fails to stun me, since it’s Boseman’s most audacious and brilliant performance.
He plays James Brown, the pompadoured, electric-souled, jive-stepping visionary of funk who revolutionized the music world (and the world at large), and the first thing to say about Boseman’s acting is that you’re forced to reach for the quintessential biopic trope to describe it: In “Get on Up,” Boseman doesn’t just play James Brown — he channels him.But the second thing to say is: How the hell do you channel James Brown?He was a force of nature.
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