Man on the Run
Paul McCartney will never be able to escape the shadow of The Beatles, although his latest documentary tries hard to shake off the golden shackles.
Silly love songs: Linda and Paul
Courtesy of Amazon Media.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Britain has become used to being divided into two camps. There are the Protestants and the Catholics, Labour and the Conservatives, the Remainers and Leavers and those who favoured either John or Paul. According to one reporter, Paul McCartney was personally responsible for a landmark in the decline of the British empire. That’s quite an onus to hoist onto the shoulders of one young man (he was 27 at the time). But as Paul would have it, it was John who was responsible for the break-up of The Beatles, the pop group that (apparently) was the final landmark of the British empire. Popular culture aside, some might argue that the London-born Tim Berners-Lee, he who invented the World Wide Web, established another landmark. But let us not digress from the subject of Paul and the latest documentary on The Fab Four.
Morgan Neville, who has already directed bio-docs on Brian Wilson, Muddy Waters, Keith Richards, Steve Martin, Pharrell Williams and Mickey Mouse, now turns his attention to the musician who sprouted Wings. After a rapid montage of the glory that was The Beatles, Neville slows down the pace to focus on Paul’s resurrection. When asked what his goal was at the time, Paul replied “personal peace” and so he bought a rundown farm in the wilds of Scotland, married an American photographer called Linda and started growing his own vegetables. All this happened after his death, when he disappeared from the front lens of the media and monopolised the front pages of newspapers around the world. There was proof everywhere: his barefooted walk across Abbey Road (as preserved on the cover of the LP of the same name), his back turned to the camera on the back cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and when asked when he last saw his brother, Michael McCartney joked (on camera) “at his funeral.”
Of course, Paul was just adjusting to life without John, George and Ringo and relishing his new-found freedom and enjoying his sheep. But he couldn’t do without music for long and produced a (critically derided) eponymous solo album and then Ram (1971) to exhibit his love of the sheep. Man on the Run starts with all the excitement of the dissolution of The Beatles and then slows down into a melange of home movies and recording sessions with voice-over contributions from Paul, Linda, Mary and Stella McCartney, Sean Ono Lennon and Mick Jagger. In the mid-section, it all begins to feel like a long soak in a lukewarm bath as McCartney’s bland, middle-of-the-road doodlings fill the soundtrack. He is asked if, at 33, he doesn’t feel too old to be a pop star? That was half a century ago. He then assembled a new band called Wings – with Linda on keyboards and co-vocalist Denny Laine (from The Moody Blues) on guitar. Six years later they were responsible for ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which then became the best-selling single of all time in the UK. A year later John Lennon was murdered in New York.
There is an air of hagiography here, which is hardly surprising as the doc’s release has been timed to coincide with the publication of McCartney’s memoir Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run and the box set Wings, while Macca himself is credited as executive producer. Fans will not be disappointed, though, and there is plenty of previously unseen archive footage, along with a string of number one hits from the band (which might resonate more strongly with older viewers). At times, though, it feels as if one is trapped at the home of an old friend exposed to an evening of holiday videos with vaguely familiar pop songs playing on the home stereo.
Featuring the voices of Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Chrissie Hynde, Sean Ono Lennon, Mary McCartney, Stella McCartney, Nick Lowe, Laurence Juber, James McCullough, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine.
Dir Morgan Neville, Pro Morgan Neville, Chloe Simmons, Meghan Walsh, Scott Rodger, Ben Chappell, Michele Anthony and David Blackman, Ex Pro Paul McCartney, Ph Gavin Thurston, Ed Alan Lowe, Sound Robert Stambler.
Tremolo/MPL Communications/PolyGram Entertainment-MetFilm Distribution/Amazon Media.
115 mins. UK/USA. 2026. UK Rel: 20 February 2026. US Rel: 27 February 2026. Cert. 15.
