Shake Hands with the Devil is a 1959 British-Irish film produced and directed by Michael Anderson and starring James Cagney, Don Murray, Dana Wynter, Glynis Johns and Michael Redgrave. The film was based on the 1933 novel of the same title by Rearden Conner, the son of a Royal Irish Constabulary policeman.

The film is set in 1921 Dublin, where the Irish Republican Army battles the Black and Tans, ex-British soldiers sent to suppress the rebels.

Plot
n 1921 Dublin, the I.R.A. battles the „Black & Tans”, special British forces given to harsh measures. Irish-American medical student Kerry O’Shea (Don Murray) hopes to stay aloof, but saving a wounded friend gets him outlawed, and inexorably drawn into the rebel organization under his former professor Dr. Sean Lenihan (James Cagney), who has „shaken hands with the devil” and begun to think of fighting as an end in itself. Complications arise when Kerry falls for a beautiful English hostage, and the British offer a peace treaty that is not enough to satisfy Lenihan.