Shake Hands with the Devil (1959) on Netflix
NR19591h 51mActionDramaHistoryWar
Dublin, 1921: medical student Kerry O'Shea wants no part in the IRA's war with the Black and Tans. After his friend Paddy Nolan is shot, their professor Lenihan draws him in.
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- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.0/101,821 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
Kerry O'Shea is an Irish-American studying medicine at the College of Surgeons in Dublin in 1921, and he wants nothing to do with the fight between the IRA and the Black and Tans. He and his friend Paddy Nolan, another medical student, are caught up in an ambush, and Nolan is hit. Nolan tells him to bring Sean Lenihan, their professor and a senior IRA commander. Lenihan takes the bullet out, but Nolan does not survive. O'Shea left a textbook with his name in it at the scene, so the British are looking for him. Lenihan takes him to the General, an old comrade of his father, who offers a passage out of Ireland; O'Shea refuses to join the IRA. Lenihan brings him to a coastal hideout, the base of an IRA unit under Chris Noonan.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Shake Hands with the Devil (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shake Hands with the Devil was initially banned from exhibition in Northern Ireland, where the fear was that the IRA drama would spark riots; the ban was lifted by September 1959.
- James Cagney was approached for the part of IRA leader Sean Lenihan by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, the screenwriters of White Heat; they thought American audiences might struggle with so uncompromising a revolutionary, and Cagney promised to play him "straight down the line".
- While filming in Ireland, bad weather and a demanding schedule stopped James Cagney from researching his family history, but he performed at Dublin's Theatre Royal on 23 September 1958 in a George M. Cohan-style routine for a Variety Club of Ireland benefit.
