If Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back” was the supreme document of the Beatles’ final moments together and of their dissolution, Morgan Neville’s “Man on the Run” is a kind of sequel.
It begins in late 1969, just months after Savile Row rooftop concert. The Beatles have broken up. Paul McCartney has seemingly disappeared. There are even rumors that he’s dead. On a remote farm in Scotland, a confused and distraught McCartney wonders whether he’ll write “another note, ever.”
But the most surprising thing about revisiting this tumultuous, tabloid-ready period of McCartney’s life is a simple fact. When the Beatles broke up, McCartney was 27 years old. To say he had lived a lifetime by then would be an understatement. By just the sheer enormity of their production and colossal cultural impact, you might easily mistakenly put McCartney in middle age by then.
“Man on the Run,” premiering Friday on Prime Video, is the story of everything that came after. McCartney, an executive producer, is never seen sitting for an interview, but his off-camera musings mark the movie, a chronicle of self renewal. For McCartney, kept boyish by the Beatles, the band's end meant a sudden coming of age.
“I had to look inside myself and find something that wasn’t the Beatles,” McCartney says in the film.
How you feel about McCartney’s post-Beatles career might inform how you feel about “Man on the Run.” For Neville, the celebrated documentary filmmaker of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,”“Piece by Piece” and “20 Feet From Stardom,” it’s a period that offers no neat narrative, but — quite unlike the mythic Beatles years — something more like the ups and down of life, with regrets and triumphs along the way.
It didn’t get off to a good start. McCartney, blamed for the Beatles breakup, was guilt-ridden. His first records were a disappointment. Singing with Linda McCartney, his wife, wasn’t greeted well. A 1973 TV special that included a rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was, to put it a mildly, a misjudgment. A curious feature of McCartney’s largely sunny disposition is a nagging self-loathing.
“If I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to believe them,” he says, referencing the Beatles split.
“Get Back” offered a revelatory window into the group’s dynamics that put many of the old views of McCartney to bed. Comparisons are tough — “Get Back” is one of the greatest docs of the century — but Jackson’s film, drawn largely from footage shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was also incredibly intimate. It captured not only the band’s individual relationships but the songwriting process in real time. (The emergence of “Get Back” from McCartney’s strumming and humming stands as one of the great sequences in documentary film.)
“Man on the Run” lacks that sense of closeness. By keeping the film in archival — the documentary is full of family photos and home movies — and without present-day talking heads, Neville lets us experience McCartney’s post-Beatles years as he did. It comes as a sacrifice, though, to a nearness to McCartney — and to the creation of his solo songs — that might have deepened the film.
The real arc of “Man on the Run” is building toward the creation of McCartney's first post-Beatles band, Wings. It’s in some ways an unlikely centerpiece. In the revolving makeup of the band, Denny Laine was the only permanent member outside Paul and Linda. On the other hand, Wings’ “Band on the Run” is the best album McCartney produced after the Beatles, and the clear culmination of years of struggle. If you needed one, this is your cue to go play “Jet” loud.
It turns out, to no one’s surprise, it’s hard to move on after being in the Beatles — especially for someone like McCartney who believed so sincerely in the band. Like its subject, “Man on the Run” inevitably pales next to films of the Beatles heyday. But it’s a meaningful companion piece about the end of an era and the start of a long and winding road.
“Man on the Run,” an Amazon MGM release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 126 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
FILE - Paul McCartney, of Paul McCartney and Wings, performs at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y. on May 21, 1976. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger offered a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s depiction of the nation as being in a “golden age” during his State of the Union, arguing in her Democratic rebuttal that costs remain high for many Americans more than a year into his second term.
Her message, that families are still struggling under Trump’s policies, is one Democrats plan to carry nationwide ahead of the midterm elections. Party leaders point to Spanberger’s double-digit victory in Virginia last November as validation of a disciplined, cost-focused campaign they now hope to replicate across the country.
"Democrats across the country are laser-focused on affordability in our nation’s capital and in state capitals and communities across America," said Spanberger. “In the most innovative and exceptional nation in the history of the world, Americans deserve to know that their leaders are focused on addressing the problems that keep them up at night.”
Spanberger was flanked by American flags as she delivered the speech from Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum with restored 18th-century buildings, invoking the site's role at the heart of Virginia’s early opposition to British rule.
“As we celebrate 250 years since America declared our independence from tyranny, I can think of no better place to speak to you,” Spanberger said.
Spanberger said she wanted to “plainly and honestly” speak to people watching at home. She structured her speech around a series of direct questions: “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe, both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?”
She contrasted those questions with what she described as the reality under Trump, saying he “has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans.” She added that Trump seeks to “pit us against one another” while “enriching himself, his family, his friends.”
“This is not what our founders envisioned. Not by a long shot,” said Spanberger. “So I’ll ask again: Is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no.”
Spanberger had far less time than the Republican president to make her case, speaking for around 13 minutes. Trump’s address to Congress stretched for just over an hour and 48 minutes, the longest in history, and ran late into the night.
In his speech, Trump described a nation with lower costs than when he took office, declaring, “This is the golden age of America.”
He also goaded the Democratic side of the House chambers throughout the speech for not standing, increasing his insults throughout the speech and calling his opponents “crazy.” But Democrats inside the chamber largely didn't react, sitting silently. Texas Rep. Al Green was removed from the chamber barely two minutes into the president’s address after holding a protest sign reading “Black People Aren’t Apes!”
Outside the chamber, Democrats who had skipped the speech responded at counterprogramming events, including a “People's State of the Union” featuring Democratic lawmakers alongside state and local leaders and celebrities.
“We know our state of the union. We know it is under attack,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said at the event.
Democrats believe the political environment is shifting in their favor. Spanberger’s win in Virginia was followed by other high-profile Democratic victories, including a special election this month in Texas, where a Democrat flipped a reliably Republican state Senate district that Trump carried by 17 percentage points in 2024.
In California Sen. Alex Padilla's Spanish-language response to Trump's address, he described the nation as “living a nightmare that divides and destroys our communities” and urged viewers to “prepare, starting today, for your voice to reverberate this November.”
Padilla, who was forcefully removed from a Homeland Security news conference in Los Angeles last year while questioning immigration raids, referenced the moment in his remarks.
“They may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up,” he said. “As our parents taught us: If you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting.”
Spanberger, meanwhile, sought to tie Republicans in Congress closely to Trump as Democrats aim to flip the House and Senate in November. She warned that additional tariffs would raise costs “and Republicans in Congress, they remain unwilling to assert their constitutional authority to stop him.”
“They’re making your life harder. They’re making your life more expensive,” she said.
People hold up their banners during the "People's State of the Union" rally outside of the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., speaks during the "People's State of the Union" rally outside of the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger watches President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Williamsburg, Va. Spanberger will deliver the Democratic response after the address. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, Pool)
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger listens to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Williamsburg, Va. Spanberger will deliver the Democratic response after the address. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, Pool)
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers the Democratic response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Williamsburg, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, Pool)
FILE - Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers her State of the Commonwealth address before a joint session of the Virignia General Assembly at the Capitol, Jan. 19, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
