The Pink Panther

At a football match between France and China, the French coach Yves Gluant arrives wearing the priceless Pink Panther diamond ring and embraces his girlfriend, pop star Xania. After France wins in sudden death, Gluant is killed by a poison dart, with the Pink Panther diamond nowhere to be found. Eager to win the Légion d'honneur, Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus promotes clumsy policeman and village idiot Jacques Clouseau to the rank of inspector and assigns him to the case. While Clouseau draws the media's attention, Dreyfus assembles a secret team to crack the case and assigns Gendarme Gilbert Ponton to keep an eye on Clouseau. Clouseau befriends Ponton and falls in love with secretary Nicole Durant. Although Clouseau makes little progress in the case, due to his incompetence, he discovers that many people hated Gluant and even wanted to kill him. Bizu, a French player who blamed Gluant for "stealing away" Xania, is the prime murder suspect until he is shot in the head in the football team's changing room. While gathering information at a casino, Clouseau meets MI6 006 agent Nigel Boswell, who foils a robbery, orchestrated by the notorious Gas Mask Bandits while wearing Clouseau's trench coat; Clouseau mistakenly receives credit (as Nigel was not supposed to be present) and is nominated for the Légion d'honneur, angering Dreyfus and ruining his chance to be honoured. After following Xania to New York City, Ponton insists she is a suspect because Gluant cheated on her, but Clouseau believes she is innocent; though her actions cause him to believe she knows more than she is letting on. The poison that killed Gluant is found to have been derived from Chinese herbs, leading Dreyfus to conclude that the killer is a Chinese envoy named Dr. Pang, whom Gluant had several dealings with. Dreyfus has Clouseau's bag swapped for one full of weapons at the airport, and Clouseau is arrested (primarily due to his inability to say "hamburger" correctly, having attempted to smuggle some onto the flight back) and vilified by the press on his return to France. Dreyfus demotes Clouseau, revealing the truth about why he promoted him in the first place, and plots to publicly arrest Dr. Pang at the Presidential Ball, where Xania will perform. Clouseau reads an article online about his arrest and notices something strange in the photograph from which he deduces that Gluant and Bizu were killed by the same person. Deducing also that Xania will be the killer's next target, Clouseau, Ponton, and Nicole hurry to the Élysée Palace and sneak into the Presidential Ball. While Dreyfus errantly arrests Dr. Pang, Clouseau and Ponton save Xania's life by capturing her would-be assassin: Yuri, the Russian trainer for the French football team. Jealous and feeling overlooked for the team's success, Yuri used his mandated knowledge of Chinese herbs to kill Gluant; he jabbed the dart unseen into Gluant's neck during their celebration, making it look like Gluant had been shot with it. He later killed Bizu, who long suspected that Yuri might try to kill Gluant and attempted to blackmail him, by using his Russian army training to target the player's occipital lobe, and then targeted Xania for ignoring him and dating Gluant; making clear that the Pink Panther wasn't the primary target all along, but a fit of jealousy. Clouseau reveals that the Pink Panther was not stolen but instead sewn into the lining of Xania's purse; the photograph of Clouseau's arrest showed an X-ray of the purse going through airport security. Xania confesses that Gluant gave her the diamond as an engagement ring just before the France-China match, but following his sudden death, she kept it hidden thinking that if she came forward with the ring, everyone would think she was the killer. Clouseau concludes that Xania is the diamond's rightful owner, and Yuri is taken into custody. Clouseau wins the Légion d'honneur which disappoints Dreyfus. Leaving the ceremony, Dreyfus' suit accidentally gets caught in Clouseau's car door, causing Dreyfus to be dragged down the street as an oblivious Clouseau drives away. While visiting a gravely injured Dreyfus in the hospital, Clouseau accidentally releases the brake on Dreyfus' bed, which rolls through the hospital and crashes through a window, throwing him down into the Seine as he curses out Clouseau, while Clouseau, Ponton, and Nicole watch from indoors.

Plot from The Pink Panther (2006 film)CC BY-SA 4.0