Irupatham Noottandu

The story is about Sagar Alias Jacky a maverick youth who turned to smuggling gold due to his bad financial situation and inspiration from the media glorifying the Mumbai underworld and its gangsters. He is partnered with Shekharankutty, the Son of the ruling chief minister of Kerala.The film starts with the Customs Authority getting information that one of the cars among the rally race cars : A blue Maruti car is being used to smuggle gold. Suddenly, the car sways from the pack and the people in it are none other than Jacky and his aide Lawrence. They hide the gold in the car's spare weel. They pass the customs checking and reach Sekarankutty's house. While leaving from there, Jacky smiles at one of the customs officers.The next scene shows Jacky, Shekarankutty and their aides: Qasim, Tony and Chanakya (Ashokan) relaxing in a room at Chanakya's hotel. Qasim and Tony are about to smuggle some more gold tonight. Shekarankutty warns Qasim that there is a traitor among them. Unfortunately, Qasim turns out to be the traitor and he escapes with te gold after killing Tony. He is then caught by Sagar and is drowned to death.The next day, Qasim's body is recovered by the police and Chanakya is sent to investigate. There, he meets Ashwathy who is a reporter for a news magazine looking to investigate the connection between politics and crime in Kerala. At the scene, she meets Jeevan, the current investigating officer whom she studied with. Sagar visits Kayikka, a fellow smuggler and reveals that they killed Qasim. Kayikka reveals that his eldest son Shahul has turned to selling weed. Sagar turns him away from it for the better and then sees the mother of his lover Jyoti who is in prison for murder. Ashwathy is drawn to the life of Sagar Alias Jacky and tries to get his attention by releasing an article stating that the CM is connected with Sagar.

Jacky is an enigmatic character who stops the smuggling business from growing because of ethical issues with narcotics.Jacky leaves the group because Shekharankutty's friend Koshy says they can do drug business. Jacky and Shekharankutty fight each other with tacts. Aswathy writes another article and she gets kidnapped by Shekharankutty. Jacky beats Shekharankutty, police raids Shekharankutty's drug station and arrests others.

Shekharankutty with his influence bails others. He gets to know that Jacky had informed the police. The Chief Minister demolishes Sagar's lovers place. But Jacky threatens him and demands to build those houses. Shekarankutty gets angry and kills Lawrence and then hits the car which had Sagar and his mother. Sagar's mother dies. The Chief Minister asks Shekharankutty to go to Dubai with full police protection. Still, Jacky finds a way to sneak into the airport disguised as a pilot and chases Shekharankutty and shoots him. Jacky gets arrested and is jailed the day his lover gets released.

• Mohanlal as Sagar Alias Jacky
• Suresh Gopi as Shekharan Kutty
• Ambika as Aswathy Varma
• Santhosh as Lawrence
• Prathapachandran as Chief Minister Inchakadu Ramakrishna Pillai
• Urvashi as Jyothi
• Jagathy Sreekumar as Ashokan / Chanakyan
• Kaviyoor Ponnamma as Meenakshiyamma
• Sreenath as Jeevan, Police officer
• K. P. A. C. Sunny as Koshy
• Janardhanan as I.G Thomas IPS
• Jagadish as Balakrishnan
• Mamukkoya as Koya
• Jagannatha Varma as Pillai, Opposition leader
• Sukumari as Janakiyamma, Jyothi's mother
• T. P. Madhavan as CI Pothen
• Jose as Santhosh, Customs officer
• Vishnuprakash as George
• Adoor Bhasi as Varma
• Kollam Ajith as Kasim

Writer S. N. Swamy got the idea for the film from a photograph featured in an English-language Sunday magazine published from Calcutta. Swami recalled in an interview that it was the time when mafia bosses had a glorified image in the country after the national emergency period in India (1975 – 1977). That was the time when public began to learn about Bombay-based mafia leaders such as Haji Mastan, Yusuf Patel, Varadarajan Mudaliar among others. The magazine had an article on Mastan and a photograph featuring much respected actor Dilip Kumar and his wife Saira Banu touching Mastan's feet for giving pranāma. It was shocking for Swami, he never imagined a mafia leader would be respected as such. It inspired the plot for Irupatham Noottandu and the character Sagar Alias Jacky.[2] The lengthy climax of the film was shot in a single day. Vipindas was the cinematographer.[3]

The music was composed by Shyam and the lyrics were written by Chunakkara Ramankutty.

The film was released on 14 May 1987. It performed well at the box office and became the highest-grossing Malayalam film until then. The film grossed more than ₹2 crore at the box office and ran for over 200 days in theatres.[1]

A spiritual successor sequel titled Sagar Alias Jacky directed by Amal Neerad was released on 26 March 2009.

• Irupatham Noottandu at IMDb