Director Morgan Neville's "Paul McCartney: Man on the Run" is an entertaining and artful breeze through Macca's immediate post-Beatles career, looking at how he reinvented himself following the band's bitter break-up by starting a new group.
There's lots for fans to enjoy here, including loads of vintage clips from interviews, TV shows, concerts and home movies. There's also a great deal of insightful commentary from Sean Ono Lennon and Paul's daughters Mary and Stella and brother Mike, along with a lot of predictable commentary from Paul, himself.
Some of the best narrative comes from Linda McCartney, who, rightfully, is provided credit for helping Paul regain his self-confidence as a songwriter and performer after the Beatles split. The film also does a good job of detailing how shabbily and unfairly Linda was treated by fans and critics.
We don't, however, hear enough from other former members of Wings, especially the late Denny Laine, who was the mainstay of the group along with Paul and Linda, and whose voice, combined with theirs', created the group's distinctive vocal blend.
There are no talking heads, which is a plus, as it helps us stay within the timeframe covered by the film. In this way, the doc shares a lot in common with the recent John and Yoko film, "One to One," which likewise used contemporary footage to tell its story of John's next steps after the Beatles.
The Lennon film is far superior to "Man on the Run" in the telling of its story and in bringing us back to that time, but it also had the advantage of focusing on a very narrow time period, whereas the Macca film bites off nearly 10 years.
Trying to cram that much story into a couple of hours was ambitious and leaves "Man on the Run" feeling a bit rushed in spots, especially in the period following the release of Band on the Run.
Little time is spent on the unusual, ship-board recording sessions of London Town and there's nothing on the Rockestra sessions for Back to the Egg, nor any clips of that supergroup's live performance at 1979's Concerts for the People of Kampuchea.
Wings guitarist Jimmy McCulloch's tragic downfall and death, meanwhile, is treated as an aside in a quote from Paul. And, while the poor sales and critical response to Back to the Egg are mentioned, there's no discussion of its RAM-like reevaluation among many critics and fans who now see the LP as one of Wings' best works.
As a film, "Man on the Run" is more creative and compelling in its telling of the Wings' story than 2001's "Wing Span," but it's fair to question whether two Macca-sanctioned documentaries covering the same period are necessary. I won't complain, since there's a lot to see in both films that's of interest, along with flaws in both.
As to why this new film now, Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary certainly set the stage for a telling of "what happened next." Macca also has an interest in refreshing the Wings "brand" every now and then, I suppose. And, maybe deeper than that, for a man of such seeming confidence, McCartney is massively insecure about his legacy and about the comparisons made between between his Beatles and solo work, and between him and John.
"Man on the Run" gets repetitive about John and Paul making amends before John was killed, and does this to the point where one might question the veracity of the claim.
If you go back and read interviews with them both from the late 1970s, you'll see that, yes, they did patch things up to a degree, but differences and hurt feelings definitely remained, and they made critical remarks about one another right up to the end. That's life, which is full of regrets and missed opportunities, and part of being human is to take a sad song and make it better.
A final note, since I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else, is that "Man on the Run" lifts its title from an excellent book by Tom Doyle, which was published back in 2014, and which covered much of the same territory as this new film. Seems like Doyle deserves a shoutout for this.
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