{"id":489764,"date":"2026-02-25T14:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T14:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/489764\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T14:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T14:40:09","slug":"man-on-the-run-review-paul-mccartney-looks-back-on-wings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/489764\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Man on the Run’ Review: Paul McCartney looks back on Wings"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Peter Jackson\u2019s \u201cThe Beatles: Get Back\u201d<\/a> was the supreme document of the Beatles\u2019 final moments together and of their dissolution, Morgan Neville\u2019s \u201cMan on the Run\u201d<\/a> is a kind of sequel.<\/p>\n

It begins in late 1969, just months after Savile Row rooftop concert. The Beatles have broken up. Paul McCartney<\/a> has seemingly disappeared. There are even rumors that he\u2019s dead. On a remote farm in Scotland, a confused and distraught McCartney wonders whether he\u2019ll write \u201canother note, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the most surprising thing about revisiting this tumultuous, tabloid-ready period of McCartney\u2019s life is a simple fact. When the Beatles broke up, McCartney was 27 years old. To say he had lived a lifetime by then would be an understatement. By just the sheer enormity of their production and colossal cultural impact, you might easily mistakenly put McCartney in middle age by then.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan on the Run,\u201d premiering Friday on Prime Video, is the story of everything that came after. McCartney, an executive producer, is never seen sitting for an interview, but his off-camera musings mark the movie, a chronicle of self renewal. For McCartney, kept boyish by the Beatles, the band\u2019s end meant a sudden coming of age. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had to look inside myself and find something that wasn\u2019t the Beatles,\u201d McCartney says in the film.<\/p>\n

How you feel about McCartney\u2019s post-Beatles career might inform how you feel about \u201cMan on the Run.\u201d For Neville, the celebrated documentary filmmaker of \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor,\u201d<\/a>\u201cPiece by Piece\u201d<\/a> and \u201c20 Feet From Stardom,\u201d it\u2019s a period that offers no neat narrative, but \u2014 quite unlike the mythic Beatles years \u2014 something more like the ups and down of life, with regrets and triumphs along the way.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t get off to a good start. McCartney, blamed for the Beatles breakup, was guilt-ridden. His first records were a disappointment. Singing with Linda McCartney, his wife, wasn\u2019t greeted well. A 1973 TV special that included a rendition of \u201cMary Had a Little Lamb\u201d was, to put it a mildly, a misjudgment. A curious feature of McCartney\u2019s largely sunny disposition is a nagging self-loathing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to believe them,\u201d he says, referencing the Beatles split.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet Back\u201d offered a revelatory window into the group\u2019s dynamics that put many of the old views of McCartney to bed. Comparisons are tough \u2014 \u201cGet Back\u201d is one of the greatest docs of the century \u2014 but Jackson\u2019s film, drawn largely from footage shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was also incredibly intimate. It captured not only the band\u2019s individual relationships but the songwriting process in real time. (The emergence of \u201cGet Back\u201d from McCartney\u2019s strumming and humming stands as one of the great sequences in documentary film.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMan on the Run\u201d lacks that sense of closeness. By keeping the film in archival \u2014 the documentary is full of family photos and home movies \u2014 and without present-day talking heads, Neville lets us experience McCartney\u2019s post-Beatles years as he did. It comes as a sacrifice, though, to a nearness to McCartney \u2014 and to the creation of his solo songs \u2014 that might have deepened the film.<\/p>\n

The real arc of \u201cMan on the Run\u201d is building toward the creation of McCartney\u2019s first post-Beatles band, Wings. It\u2019s in some ways an unlikely centerpiece. In the revolving makeup of the band, Denny Laine was the only permanent member outside Paul and Linda. On the other hand, Wings\u2019 \u201cBand on the Run\u201d is the best album McCartney produced after the Beatles, and the clear culmination of years of struggle. If you needed one, this is your cue to go play \u201cJet\u201d loud.<\/p>\n

It turns out, to no one\u2019s surprise, it\u2019s hard to move on after being in the Beatles \u2014 especially for someone like McCartney who believed so sincerely in the band. Like its subject, \u201cMan on the Run\u201d inevitably pales next to films of the Beatles heyday. But it\u2019s a meaningful companion piece about the end of an era and the start of a long and winding road. <\/p>\n

\u201cMan on the Run,\u201d an Amazon MGM release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 126 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Peter Jackson\u2019s \u201cThe Beatles: Get Back\u201d was the supreme document of the Beatles\u2019 final moments together and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[224784,10167,88,26806,103196,134800,10815,25222,224783,76904,206,216,13501,106429],"class_list":["post-489764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-denny-laine","tag-documentaries","tag-entertainment","tag-film-reviews","tag-jake-coyle","tag-linda-mccartney","tag-media","tag-media-and-entertainment-industry","tag-michael-lindsay-hogg","tag-morgan-neville","tag-movies","tag-music","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-peter-jackson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}