There’s something in most of us that enjoys a crime film. I don’t know if it’s because we enjoy seeing the rich and stupid get fleeced or if we enjoy seeing the clever crooks attempting to doing the fleecing. This is especially true of con games. There’s a perverse pleasure in watching the con happen and seeing all of the pieces fall into place. There’s a reason that most con game films are either overtly or are at least partly comedies. Hot Millions is overtly a comedy. It’s a very British comedy, one that requires some effort on the part of the audience to find the funny. It’s rarely laugh-out-loud and much more content to go for a smirk and chuckle.
Marcus Pendleton (Peter Ustinov) has served his time in prison for embezzling, making himself useful doing small services like taxes for the warden. His career as an embezzler came to this temporary halt thanks to his being tracked down by a computer. Rather than causing him to decide that his chosen career is too risky, Pendleton decides that his best option is to understand just enough about computers to fool them. Bluffing his way into a private club, he tracks down a lead on a computer expert named Caesar Smith (Robert Morley). Smith, approaching retirement, has always had a dream of writing the definitive book on moths of the Amazon. Pendleton convinces him to do so, and usurps the man’s identity.
