When the coach of a French soccer team is killed, his ring featuring the legendary Pink Panther diamond goes missing. Luckily, Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) has a plan: assign his most intelligent, most driven officers to track down the thieves in secret, while publicly assigning the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Steve Martin) as head of the case. Clouseau seems hopeless, until his various mistakes and misjudgments miraculously put him on the real killer's trail.