No bum notes here.

It’s hard to quantify just how seismic a loss Chadwick Bosman’s passing was. To say that the actor was taken too soon would be a monumental understatement.

After just fifteen feature films, a rapidly burgeoning reputation as both an actor and a human being, and taking centre stage for the monumental cultural touchstone that was Black Panther, his passing at the tragically tender age of 43 left a huge void in the world that will never truly be refilled.

Under such circumstances, it’s almost impossible to separate out Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom from what it has, unfortunately, become - Chadwick Boseman’s final performance.

In the sweltering heat of 1920s Chicago, tensions and temperatures simmer over the course of an afternoon recording session. Late to the session and in a foul mood, the fearless and fiery Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) engages in a battle of wills with her white manager and producer over control of her music, while her band trade verbal and physical blows in the studio’s claustrophobic rehearsal room. Spurred on by ambitious trumpet player Levee (Chadwick Boseman), the musicians are drawn into an eruption of stories, revealing truths that will alter the course of their lives forever.

It really isn’t long into Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom that Chadwick Boseman launches into his first bulldozing monologue, and it takes even less time than that to recall just what made him such a precocious talent. Barely keeping still for a second, Boseman prowls around the screen like he owns it, which, in truth, he absolutely does.

While Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is, in many ways, an ensemble piece, there’s little doubting Boseman’s claim as the film’s star. Fierce, commanding, and electrifying, he wields his trumpet like a swordsman ready for battle, ripping through August Wilson’s powerful words with a charm and a command of his craft that few can touch.

It’s a truly fitting exclamation point on a far too short a life and career, one that points tantalisingly towards the many great things destined in the man’s future - both behind the Black Panther mask and out of it - a promise that will tragically never come to pass.

Levee is a character that Chadwick Boseman clearly relishes the chance to dig his teeth into, but one that threatens to suck the oxygen out of the room if left unchecked. It is therefore a relief then that the rest of the cast step up to the task.

To their immense credit, seasoned character actors Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts refuse to wilt under the intense heat of Chadwick’s performance, but it’s in Viola Davis that the film finds a formidable sparring partner for the late star. Sporting heavy eye makeup, a few extra pounds, and slicked with sweat throughout, Viola’s Ma is an intense, larger-than-life character that she fully embraces, and one that represents the perfect adversary for Chadwick’s Levee.

While their approaches may differ, both Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman imbue the same energy, commanding your attention for every second of their screen time. Essentially a one room play, it’d be very easy for any actor to feel confined by such restrictions, yet both actors refuse to be constrained, using the cramped setting to their advantage.

As one might expect, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is very much a play put to film, as August Wilson’s Broadway production is transplanted from the stage to the screen wholesale. Reminiscent of the recent adaptation of Wilson’s Fences (also starring Viola Davis), there’s no escaping just how stagey the film feels at times; and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, you have to wonder whether there are any real advantages to copying and pasting things into a movie without adding a cinematic x-factor.

But while the film’s setting may be restrictive, the script most certainly isn’t. Essentially operating as a string of conversations, Ma Rainey’s dialogue twists and turns as the verbal sparring between characters has you enthralled to the point that it’s easy to forget that we’ve been in the same scene for an age.

With both Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in formidable form, the film’s words hit hard and hit deep, as Levee and Ma’s furious musings fire off wildly at a jazz-like rhythm, hitting a lot of issues that are as pertinent now as they were a century ago.

Of course, race and racism play a huge part in the film’s discourse, with almost every word of dialogue laced with a level of social commentary that resonates as much now as it ever has. While Ma Rainey’s setting may be very much a period one, you can’t help but feel the weight of the character’s struggles in the here and now.

The contentious ties between Ma Rainey and company and the white characters around them is put under the film’s intense spotlight, as it digs deep into the fraught one-way relationship between black entertainers and the white folk that profit from them. As pertinent an issue now as it was in the 1920s, the off balance power dynamic between the talent and those squeezing them for every penny is a shocking one, as the film hits a number of very powerful notes.

These fractious race relations intersect with both Ma and Levee in very different ways, as the two talents - at opposite ends of their career - take opposing attitudes towards the white power around them. And it’s in their varying approaches to this power struggle that the film really sings, as Ma’s blistering, no-nonsense method constantly wrestles with Levee’s brash, calculating cockiness. At its heart, the film is all about power - how white folk wield it over black talent and that talent’s approach to taking it back.

In two of the film’s most poignant monologues, Ma finally explains the necessity of her diva-ish approach, while Levee tells his origin story as a black man refusing to play to the beat of the white man’s drum. These two monologues are Ma Rainey’s anchor points, and while their approaches may differ, the power, conviction, and inherent tragedy of their words is what makes the film sing.

And sing the film most certainly does. While the real life characters behind the story may have slipped through the cracks of history, the music and culture at Ma Rainey’s heart is as present as ever. As both a comment on Black entertainment as a commodity and a pure celebration of its successes, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom soars.

Framed by two blistering performances from Viola Davis and the late, great Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom overcomes its inherent staginess to become a searing comment on race and a loving ode to both an unsung blues legend and Black culture at large. While there’s no getting away from the film’s tragic circumstances and the painful finality of Chadwick’s performance, you can be rest assured that he has left us on a perfect note.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is available to stream on Netflix now.