Card Sharks (2001)★ 1.9/10
- Drama
- Romance
- Family
- Game Show
Directed by: Balu Mahendra, Wayne Hackett, Richard Dipirro
Written by: John Paul, Balu Mahendra, Rick Rosner
Unnikrishnan (Mammootty), an ex-convict, tells his tragic love story to his fellow passengers in a school bus. An orphan and a forest officer by profession, he falls in love with a local girl, Thulasi, during his stay at a forest area. They decided to get married and he sets off to inform his marriage to his best friend. On his way back the police arrest him as a suspected criminal, who has some visible similarities to Unnikrishnan. There he accidentally kills a policeman and is sentenced to life imprisonment. During his early days in prison, he writes a letter to Thulasi asking her to forget him. When his prison term was about to complete, he wrote a letter to her to light a lamp if she still waits for him. After long years of torment in the prison he goes to meet Thulasi. Does she still wait for him? That's the question of his fellow passengers too.
- Original title
- Card Sharks
- Storyline
- Revamped version of the classic game show, which mixed in elements of "Candid Camera" and "People are Funny" with the familiar high-low card game based on the rules of Acey-Deucy. Four contestants, two at a time, competed in two separate best-of-three High-Low challenges. In the High-Low challenge, the contestant chosen to go first was shown the base card (in a block of seven) and had to guess whether the next card was higher or lower than the one just shown. An incorrect guess passed control of the block to his/her opponent. At any time, the contestant in control of the cards could use a "Clip Chip" to change the card currently in play. However, to change the card, he/she had to correctly guess the outcome of a "Video Dilemma;" these hidden-camera vignettes depicted moral situations (e.g., a pretty woman asking a passerby whether she should leave a note on the windshield of a car she just dented), behavioral questions (e.g., whether a college football quarterback would choose a sexy female college student wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans or the girl's twin sister wearing a sexy evening gown) or a man-on-the-street interview (e.g., guessing which of two cars a man owns, either a sports car or a sports-utility vehicle). Each High-Low playoff was worth $500, with the winner of two facing the next best-of-three "High-Low" challenge winner one-game High-Low challenge. The winner of that playoff won an additional $1,100, was the day's champion and played the Money Cards. The rules were largely identical to those from the classic show, with the following changes: Only six cars were played, the contestant's current $2,100 cash winnings were turned into betting money and divided evenly on the three-tiered board (i.e., $700 for each row), and the contestant always played the Big Bet (even if they "Busted" on the second row, if they had nothing when they reached this point, they were given $700). As before, minimum bets were $50 except for the Big Bet card, where they had to risk at least half; the contestant was allowed to change the first card on each line (without having to answer a Video Dilemma); the maximum take was $51,800.
- Rating
- 1.9 / 10 · 41
- Companies
- Prakkat Films, Mark Goodson Television Productions, Pearson Television International, The Fremantle Corporation
- Release dates
- IN September 20, 1985
- US September 17, 2001