‘Man on the Run’ chronicles McCartney’s post-Beatles long and winding road

Paul McCartney, of Paul McCartney and Wings, performs at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y. on May 21, 1976 [AP Photo]

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.

“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. 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.

“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.

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.

[Abridged]

JAKE COYLE, MDT/AP Film Writer

“Man on the Run,” an Amazon MGM release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 126 minutes.