The movie is based on Kerala's traditional Vadakkanpattu (The Northern Ballard Folklore). The fictional story is about Kadathanadan Ambadi (Mohanlal) who wants to avenge his father - Thacholi Manikoth Othenan Kuruppu's death and retrieve the sacred sword Bhadravaal and Sacred Thread, which were missing since the death of Thacholi Othenan.

Kadathanadan Ambadi along with his Mentor-Martial arts Guru sets out searching mysterious disappearance of the sword. They suspect a Muslim Manager of their household who went missing since the day. While searching, they reached Kingdom, whose ruler was a mysterious Black Magician called Kowliya. The Magician Ruler Kowliya used to send his eagle to search for each's day beautiful lady, to be sacrificed each day for strengthening the King. In that process, the eagle settled 's house whose lady's marriage was fixed on the day. The soldiers dragged the girl and brought her to sacrifice pit, only to be saved by Ambadi who killed the King. It later found that, the girl and her brother were sons of . Moyideen narrates the story, who within the Thacholi family plotted against to stage a coup and get hold of the sword, making thief, who was later sold as slave to Tulunad's King. The King also holds the key to secret magical cave where the sword was kept. Ambadi sets to Tulunadu, where he lures the princess and get to know about whereabouts of the Key. Ambadi fights against King and his soldiers and grabs the key from his necklace and proceeds to Magical Cave with his Guru, Payyappilly Chanthu. He had to fight against Demoness (Nagayakshi) who guards the sword as well as a Water Demoness.

After getting back the Sacred Sword - "Bhadravaal" he returns to Kadathanadu with his Guru, Payyappilly Chanthu. But they were not aware of the fact that his father's sister- Unichala (Sukumaari), her two children (Ganesh Kumar and an unknown actress) and Moosakkuutti (Srinivasan) were captured by Kathiroor Chandrappan ( Kochin Haneefa). Payyappilly Chanthu's ( Prem Nazeer) daughter Kunjilakshmi feels betrayed as she knew that Ambadi was not alone but with a Princess.

Malayalam actor Shammi Thilakan dubbed for 20 characters including late Prem Nazir.

Negative rights controlled by the Kerala High Court, Navodaya release, completed and released through Navodaya by the Kerala High Court order CRL.M.C.49 & 63 April 5/88 by the Honourable Mr. Justice Chettur Sankaran Nair and the Supreme Court judgement of 15, February 1989, SLP (CRL) 1127-28/88 & 1148-49/88 in the division bench of Honourable chief justice R.S.Pathak and Honourable S.Natarajan supervised by the Honourable court's commissioners Adv. Siby Mathew & Adv. Koshy George.

The film was originally produced by Sajan Vargheese for Saj Productions.^[4] He was the head of Oriental Finance and Exchange Company^[5] and when the company faced loss, the respected Kerala High Court ordered to release the film and pay back the amount to depositors from the film's collections. The Court ordered Navodaya productions to take care of the release and give report to the Court.

The film then collected a record Rs.35 lakhs gross in the first week itself. In 1990, Director Priyadarshan canned a fight scene between Mohanlal and Disco Shanti in a cave, was much appreciated for its technical brilliance.