Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
New McCartney doc. Keep in mind that Scarecrow Video has a multitude of Beatle-related material on its shelves, for those of you whose religious practices tilt in that direction, as mine do.
Man on the Run
Paul McCartney may have spent the 1970s trying to convince the world, and probably himself, that Wings was really a band, rather than a bunch of good session musicians gathered around a singular superstar—but nobody bought it then, and nobody buys it now, and the documentary about Wings is called Man on the Run, not Band on the Run, so there.
McCartney's talent for self-mythologizing is almost as large as his talent for music, which means it is very large indeed. Over the years, interviewers have generally been stymied at trying to get him to go beyond his usual collection of Beatles anecdotes; the most revealing end-around on that score was perhaps the 2021 series McCartney 3,2,1, which focused primarily on the music (with McCartney nudged by amiable doofus Rick Rubin), allowing McCartney's savant-like musical genius to show itself in a seemingly unfiltered way. Director Morgan Neville hasn't been much more successful with this new film, an authorized work with McCartney as executive producer. Nevertheless, Sir Paul is willing to talk about the bad times and the good, and the archival material is terrific, and—well, really, folks, who can be objective about this stuff? The era, and the music—most of it—is fascinating, and Man on the Run is a 115-minute wallow.
The participants do occasionally poke fun at McCartney for the pretense that Wings was just a band like any other; as the years unfold, the frequent line-up changes attest to the fact that just one person was calling the shots. McCartney's encouragement that the band become like a family, and indeed his own endearing record as a devoted husband and father, suggest a need in him that might be further explored. Meanwhile, the movie is a tribute to Linda McCartney, drafted by her husband to be a full-time band member (and lightning rod for criticism) while also being expected to perform housewife-mom duties as a steady gig. (In retrospect, as much as I rolled my eyes about Linda's presence in Wings at the time, there was something fairly forward-looking about having a mixed-gender rock and roll band.) The movie doesn't mention Linda's credit as co-writer of early Wings songs, which allegedly had to do with McCartney trying to outfox an unfair publishing-rights contract—it would be nice to hear more about that little footnote to music history.
But that's fine. This is a family-made film, and you take it for that. You will hear pieces of "Jet" and "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Let Me Roll It," and it is awfully nice to hear them. Probably the film won't move the needle in any way; nobody will be persuaded that Wings wasn't simply McCartney, or vice versa. But we're in the presence of genius, and he's still around, and that's enough.
February 27, 2026
