Unlike political movies that focus on the dangers — corruption, greed, power run amok — inherent in the messy administration of an unwieldy republic (like, say, the United States), Shake Hands With the Devil shines a lurid light on a more primal menace: namely, the embrace of violence as a means to a specific, long-dreamt-of political end. In director Michael Anderson’s hands, the story of a Dublin doctor and college lecturer (James Cagney, brilliant as always) who moonlights as an IRA commander in 1920s Ireland is far more than an above-average historical drama. What sets Shake Hands With the Devil apart as a political film is its clear-eyed depiction of a man in the grips of a political passion so incendiary that he’s no longer a freedom fighter, but a rote agent of destruction.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJmVUo766h0]