Shake Hands with the Devil

Filmed on location, Shake Hands With the Devil is set in Ireland during the "troubles" of 1921. James Cagney plays a brilliant medical professor who doubles as head of the Irish Republican Army. Cagney convinces one of his more pacifistic students, Don Murray, to join the underground struggle ...more

For the time in which it was made, Shake Hands with the Devil packed quite a punch. If time has made the extremities of Devil's plot and characterizations seem dated, and if it is not quite accurate as history, it still is an involving look at the horrible conflict that has bedeviled Ireland for so many years. Devil's biggest problem is the naïve look it takes at the complicated Irish-English conflict -- but that won't bother many audiences, who will enjoy the heightened melodrama that this ...more