Review of Shake Hands with the Devil

A rather nondescript movie which labors to really come to grips with the issues, but there is more to this film than meets the eye, and its worth viewing more than once. Jim Cagney gives an excellent portrayal as the intellectual who seems to have thought everything through, and draws his protégé over onto the dark side, much against the latter's better judgment. Only right at the end are we made aware that whatever higher levels of reasoning may have led the professor down the path of terrorism, all he really wants to do is kill women.

I'd call that a fairly definitive statement about terrorists in general and Cagney makes it in his understated but masterful style. I wonder if his character was based on a real person from that troubled time ?

R. B.