Paul McCartney: Man on the Run

More than half a century after The Beatles’ breakup, the band remains less a closed chapter than an ongoing excavation. Every few years, another corner of the mosaic gets dusted off and reframed. With Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, director Morgan Neville doesn’t attempt to solve the whole 10,000-piece puzzle. Instead, he zeroes in on one crucial, often misunderstood stretch: the years immediately following the split, when McCartney was forced to answer a question no one had ever asked him before, who are you without The Beatles?

Neville, who has quietly become one of our most reliable chroniclers of pop mythologies, understands that the most compelling story here isn’t Wings’ hit parade. It’s the psychic aftershock of the breakup. The film’s first 40 to 50 minutes are as insightful and emotionally resonant as anything committed to the Beatles cinematic canon. Lennon had privately quit. McCartney, when he made his own move, became the public face of the collapse. Lawsuits followed. So did barbed songs with Lennon’s “How Do You Sleep?” lashing out with particular cruelty.

And there’s McCartney, suddenly adrift. Retreating to the countryside. Drinking more than he should. Wondering if he’d made a catastrophic mistake. Neville assembles this section with a kind of disarming intimacy. We see the beard come in, the baby face half-buried, the confidence shaken. McCartney recalls the sting of being reduced to “Yesterday” and “Another Day.” His response; “Well, fuck you… How do I sleep at night? Just fine!," lands not as bluster but as bruised pride hardening into resolve. Forming Wings wasn’t just a career move. It was survival.

What distinguishes Man on the Run from the usual rock-doc parade is its immersive design. Neville avoids contemporary talking-head interviews altogether. Modern voices, Sean Ono Lennon, Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jagger, are heard only in voiceover, never seen. The effect is transportive. We never leave the era. Archival footage, animated flourishes, and nimble motion graphics keep us firmly planted in the 1970s, as if the film itself refuses to break the time barrier.

It’s a wise choice. So many music documentaries fracture their momentum by cutting to present-day commentary that drains the oxygen from the myth. Neville instead lets the period breathe. The result feels less like a retrospective and more like living inside the uncertainty of the moment.

Once Wings lifts off, the film shifts gears into something more jukebox-adjacent — and undeniably entertaining. “Band on the Run” becomes the pivot point. “Jet.” “Let Me Roll It.” “Silly Love Songs.” The hits stack up in rapid succession, a reminder that even if the 1960s had never happened, McCartney would still stand as one of the premier craftsmen of 20th-century pop. There’s a strong case to be made that he was chasing something different than Lennon, not confession, but construction. Hooks as architecture. Melodies as propulsion.

If the back half of the film doesn’t feel quite as revelatory as the opening act, it’s only because the broad strokes of Wings’ ascent are already well documented. Yes, there are terrific unseen clips. Yes, Linda McCartney finally receives her due as the glue holding the enterprise together. Yes, we revisit the Japan arrest, the relentless touring, the revolving personnel. But this section plays more like affirmation than excavation. The true emotional excavation happened earlier, in the wreckage of 1970.

Still, the documentary does something quietly impressive: it humanizes McCartney without manufacturing melodrama. He was never the sex-drugs-rock-and-roll caricature. But Neville shows us the crossroads; the fear, the insecurity, the stubborn resilience. By the time Lennon’s death arrives near the film’s close, and McCartney reflects on the blessing that they reconciled, the sentiment lands with genuine weight. “It’s beautiful and it’s sad,” he says. You believe him.

At over two hours, mileage may vary depending on your patience level. The pace is brisk, sometimes breathless. And diehards may not find many bombshell revelations about Wings’ internal dynamics or decline. But for casual fans and even for those who once identified as “a John person” this feels close to essential viewing.

What Paul McCartney: Man on the Run ultimately accomplishes is reframing. It reminds us that reinvention is its own act of courage. That stepping out from the shadow of the biggest band in history required not just talent, but nerve. And that the so-called lightweight Beatle spent the 1970s quietly building a body of work that continues to echo across generations.

Neville doesn’t evangelize Wings so much as contextualize them. He invites us to see McCartney not merely as a legend, but as a man at a crossroads; uncertain, wounded, stubbornly creative.

By the time the credits roll, you may not feel like you’ve uncovered a lost chapter of rock history. But you will likely find yourself with a deeper appreciation for the artist and the person, who refused to let the story end in 1970.

4.5/5