Paul McCartney – Man on the Run (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
1 day ago
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PAUL McCARTNEY: MAN ON THE RUN (2025)

Featuring Paul McCartney, Denny Seiwell, Henry McCullough, Denny Laine, Laurence Juber, Steve Holley, Chris Thomas, Stella McCartney, Mary McCartney, Mick Jagger, Chrissie Hynde, Nick Lowe, Sean Ono Lennon and footage of Linda McCartney, Wings, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, George Martin and The Beatles.

Directed by Morgan Neville.

Distributed by Prime Video. 115 minutes. Rated R.

There is a story I was told by an old girlfriend back in the 1980s which may have been apocryphal, or may have simply been an urban legend, but that I thought kind of captured the gist of Paul McCartney. Supposedly McCartney was meeting one of his daughters’ dates for the first time. He asked the guy what he did. The guy said he was a musician. McCartney replied that he’d been in a couple of bands over the years himself. And, supposedly, the guy asked him, “What, were you in a band before Wings?”

That story sort of sums McCartney up. Good natured, ironic, self-deprecating, nice, not all caught up in ego, with a twist that shows he doesn’t mind being the butt of the joke.

Well, yes, Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings. And he was in some after, too, if you count his solo bands. However, Paul McCartney: Man on the Run is mostly about Wings. It takes a look at perhaps the most chronicled man in the 20th century, but I pretty much sticks to the period of 1970 to 1980, the time when Wings ruled the airwaves. Oh, sure, it starts with the end of The Beatles (Paul’s previous band, don’t cha know) and ends with the sputtering out of Wings in the early 1980s when McCartney released his second solo album and dealt with the death of his old friend and bandmate John Lennon.

In the 1980s that story would make sense because the reign of Wings was still fresh in the memory. Over 50 years on from the first Wings album and over 60 years into McCartney’s career, Wings is no longer high up in the list of things people think of when they hear McCartney’s name.

Interestingly, even though the band was mostly pretty huge throughout the 1970s, it certainly does not get the reverence that McCartney was used to with The Beatles. During those years, McCartney wrote some stone-cold classics, like “Band on the Run,” “My Love,” “Live and Let Die,” “Maybe I’m Amazed,” my own personal favorite “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Jet,” and “With a Little Luck.” At the same time he put out some much cheesier stuff like “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘Em In,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Mull of Kintyre,” and “Arrow Through Me.” (I have to admit I kind of like some of those songs too, particularly the last one.)

So, the Wings years are due for some historical resurrection and re-evaluation. For the most part, Man on the Run succeeds smashingly at that. The film is not without its faults as a musical history – they spend a little too much time on the Wings Over America tour while barely mentioning or ignoring such later albums as London Town and Back to the Egg.

Perhaps that makes sense, though. At one point McCartney says that the best lineup of the group was the one from the Over America tour, which had most of the members leave Wings by 1977. Longtime guitarist Denny Laine – the only member of Wings other than Paul and Linda McCartney for the entire run of the band – agreed that those last two albums had lost the magic of earlier Wings work.

However, even with those caveats, Man on the Run is a fascinating look at a specific era of the man’s life, one that is not always given the attention that it surely deserves. While McCartney has had a sporadically very successful solo career over the decades since he left Wings behind, honestly his solo career has never quite lived up to the history of Wings (or The Beatles, of course.) He did some of his finest work over that decade and it should not be overlooked.

It was sensitively directed by prolific documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces and the upcoming Lorne Michaels doc.)

While McCartney is executive producer and heavily involved in this film, it is not just a puff piece. It shows some less flattering moments in McCartney’s life – like the run-down Scottish farmhouse he hid in after the splintering of The Beatles, his time in a Japanese jail on marijuana possession charges and his seemingly flippant reaction to Lennon’s murder in a TV interview.

Many people who have gotten to meet Paul McCartney have said that he is one of the nicest celebrities that they have ever run across. Watching Man on the Run, I can believe that.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBcllNrY0u8