Josh Reviews Man on the Run
Man on the Run is a new documentary film directed by Morgan Neville (who has helmed many wonderful documentaries, including Best of Enemies, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, The Saint of Second Chances, Steve! A Documentary in 2 Pieces, and many more). This film focuses on Paul McCartney’s life and musical career following the breakup of the Beatles, and his formation of the band Wings. Click here to watch it now on Amazon Prime Video!
This is a wonderful subject for a documentary! There have been no shortage of wonderful projects exploring the Beatles’ magical decade-long existence as a band. I have seen many of them, and I will continue watching new ones as they get made. (Sam Mendes’ wild-sounding four-film Beatles biopic that’s in the works is very exciting to me.)
But I also love Wings, the band that McCartney led in the seventies! I dearly love the Wings albums Band on the Run and Venus and Mars (from 1973 & 1975, respectfully), and the phenomenal double-album Wings over America (a live recording from their 1976 tour). I listened to those albums a million times growing up, and they’re as joyful to me as most Beatles albums are.
So I think the Wings period in the seventies is worthy of exploration, and I don’t think this era has been anywhere near as deeply mined as the Beatles decade in the sixties.
Mr. Neville’s wonderful documentary Man on the Run met all of my expectations. It’s is a fascinating tour through Paul McCartney’s musical career and personal life (the two were often intertwined, especially with his wife Linda’s being a key band-member in Wings!) through the decade of the seventies. We see McCartney’s earliest post-Beatles solo albums and explore his feelings about the Beatles’ gradual break-up. The documentary digs into McCartney’s desire to once again be a part of a band (as opposed to being primarily a solo artists with back-up musicians) and how that led him to create a new band, Wings. We then follow this new band through their growing pains, arriving eventually at their triumphant American tour in ’76, and then to their eventual break-up.
Ms. Neville has taken the approach of eschewing the use of talking heads. Never in the doc do we see the faces of old people being interviewed in the present day. Instead, we hear their voices as narration (with on-screen chyrons helpfully identifying who is speaking). On screen, we see a wonderful collection of archival materials — lots of photos and video footage — so that we’re very anchored in the time being talked about.
Mr. Neville and his team have done a wonderful job in not only finding all of that archival material but in weaving all the bits and pieces together into a pleasing visual symphony. I knew we were in good hands right away, at the start of the film, when we get to see a phenomenal montage that, in just a few minutes, encapsulates the full course of the life of the Beatles, from formation to break-up, all scored to “The End “from Abbey Road, and ending just as the last line of the song (“and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make”) plays. That was brilliant! Then as the rest of the film unfolds, we often get to see a beautiful collage of old photos and images, edited together on screen, almost like we’re looking at a scrapbook. These images are often animated, bringing further momentum to the imagery and making it feel like we’re strolling through a scrapbook come to life. This is a lovely approach.
I was also blown away by the wealth of behind the scenes material that Mr. Neville and his team were able to incorporate into this film, especially lots of sweet footage of Paul and Linda and their kids at home in the remote Scottish farm-house where they lived for most of that period. It was moving to get to see these glimpses of their happy home life.
Paul McCartney has gotten plenty of criticism for his post-Beatles output, and the film doesn’t ignore that. At the same time, it takes pains to emphasize the strength of the material as well. And there is lots of great stuff, I think, in this Wings era! I thought it was particularly sweet to hear Sean Lennon (John and Yoko’s son) praise McCartney’s much-maligned album Ram as “a masterpiece”.
Speaking of people getting criticism, I appreciated the focus the film gives to Linda McCartney, and how much we get to hear from her through archival recordings. Linda’s story is an integral part of Wings. She got a lot of criticism, back in the day, with critics both professional and amateur slamming her skills as a musician. It’s interesting to get to hear from both Linda and Paul on the film, exploring both of their perspectives on why she was in the band and how they felt about it, and about the criticism. I enjoyed getting to know Linda as a person and an artist through this film.
Man on the Run covers a lot of ground, though I’ll admit there were places where I wanted more details. I wanted to know where the name Wings came from. I’d have loved to have heard more about how McCartney & Wings came to write a Bond song (the fantastic rocker “Live and Let Die” in 1973). And I’d definitely have loved to have gotten a little more insight as to why various Wings band-members left the group at various points. I don’t need to wallow in gossip, but I’d have liked to have both heard more from those band-members about their perspectives, and also about what McCartney was thinking and feeling as his new band was occasionally running into rocky waters.
I’d wondered where this film would end; and if the film would address in any way Linda McCartney’s tragic early death in 1998. It doesn’t; instead, the film wraps up around the time of John Lennon’s tragic murder in 1980. That makes sense as an end point for this particular slice of Paul McCartney’s story.
This is a wonderful documentary! I always enjoy Morgan Neville’s documentaries, and as a huge fan of both The Beatles and Wings, I found this quite interesting to watch. Click here to watch it now on Amazon Prime Video!
Please support my website by clicking through one of my Amazon links the next time you need to shop! As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. That means I’ll receive a small percentage from ANY product you purchase from Amazon within 24 hours after clicking through. Thank you!