It revolves around the evolution of Velu Naicker (Haasan) from an ordinary slum dweller to a highly respected crime lord in the Bombay underworld.
Nayakan is loosely based on the life of the Bombay underworld don Varadarajan Mudaliar and the American film The Godfather (1972).
Ratnam was initially approached to remake the Hindi film Pagla Kahin Ka (1970) for Srinivasan and Haasan, but refused.
It won the National Film Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Haasan), Best Cinematography (Sreeram) and Best Art Direction (Thota Tharani).
Feeling betrayed, Sakthivel stabs the police inspector and runs away to Bombay, where he is raised by Hussain, a kind-hearted smuggler living in the Dharavi slums.
His demand for a bigger commission from the smugglers enrages them, and they involve Inspector Kelkar to arrest Hussain and kill him in jail.
Velu's power and command gradually increases in Dharavi as he voices out in support of local people which gains him huge popularity among the masses.
Patil is shocked due to the lack of proper evidence against Velu as none comes forward from the public as a witness against the crimes committed by him.
Patil meets Kelkar's widow and the now grown-up Ajit and requests to disclose the truth behind her husband's death in the court.
[9] Srinivasan came to Ratnam's house and gave him an envelope, which contained a cassette of the Hindi film Pagla Kahin Ka (1970).
After Haasan asked him the kind of film he preferred to make, Ratnam suggested two stories: one was in the action genre similar to Dirty Harry (1971) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984), while the other was based on the life of the Bombay underworld don Varadarajan Mudaliar; the latter was finalised.
Haasan was initially hesitant regarding his look and wanted to sport a beard similar to that of his old-aged look in Sagara Sangamam (1983), as he felt it would not give away his jaw line, which would reveal that the character was portrayed by a younger person.
[17] Though Ratnam has stated that Saranya was "the first and only person we saw for the role",[16] Debashree Roy claimed that she was approached, but refused as she considered that speaking in Tamil would be difficult for her.
"[25] Raja Krishnamoorthy (later known as Kitty), then the General Manager at Royal Enfield, quit to portray Velu's father, with Nayakan being his debut film.
[a] According to Srinivasan, principal photography commenced in November 1986 and the first schedule lasted for 10 days, but the scenes shot during this period were scrapped because Haasan disliked them, prompting script rewrites and causing shooting to be delayed; the rewritten script had more violence, and scenes taken from The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
[29] Haasan helped in the make-up for the other actors in the film and asked Janagaraj and Delhi Ganesh to cut their hair so as to make their characters Selvam and Iyer in their old age scenes look convincing.
This was described by Lalitha Gopalan in her 2002 book Cinema of Interruptions as an homage to Once Upon a Time in America,[37] a view that was shared by S. Shiva Kumar of The Hindu.
[38] According to historian S. Theodore Baskaran, the film "tends to glorify violence and portrays the anti-social, smuggler-king in an approving and sympathetic way, modelling him on Robin Hood.
"[39] Lalitha Gopalan notes that the film "attempts faithfully to re-create a historical period by carefully managing different aspects of the mise en scène.
More than any other detail in the mise en scène, automobiles – different models of cars, jeeps, and vans – indicate the passage of time within the diegesis.
"[40] According to a New Straits Times article, the film does not extol crime or violence; rather it narrates the story of a tragic character who rises from slums to untold riches and unbridled power.
[41] Ratnam has stated that the question asked by Velu's grandson, whether he is good or bad, "puts across the moral dilemma of the man in a nutshell".
[47] "Nee Oru Kaadhal Sangeetham", set in the Hindustani raga Desh,[48] is featured on both sides of the original LP record as the second track.
When Srinivasan appealed to the revising committee at Bombay, they said that they would permit the release of the film he produced a letter stating that it was not based on Mudaliar's life.
Through writer Mathioli Shanmugam, Srinivasan met Mudaliar, who gave him a letter, after which the censor appellate board at Bombay permitted the release of the film.
[60] Writing for India Today in 1989, Madhu Jain believed Nayakan deserved "a permanent place in the Indian cinema pantheon" after watching it at the 12th International Film Festival in Delhi.
[66] English journalist Phil Hardy stated in his 1997 book The BFI Companion to Crime, "From the films that followed in the wake of The Godfather, the most interesting is Mani Rathnam's Nayakan (1987) starring [Kamal Haasan] in a fictional version of the Bombay gangster Varadarajan Mudaliar's life.
[78] When stand-up comedian and television anchor Bosskey launched a quirky play titled Dada in October 2005, he named the cast after famous characters in Tamil films.
[79] Similarly, in the 2013 comedy film Onbadhule Guru, in which the characters were named after popular protagonists of Tamil cinema, a member of the supporting cast was christened Velu Naicker.
He also accused Haasan of interfering with the original screenplay by Ratnam to include sequences copied from The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America.