"Ocean's Twelve" picks up not where "Ocean's Eleven" left off, but three years later -- in other words, the 11, the ragtag outfit of thieves and con artists led by Danny Ocean (George Clooney), have had plenty of time to blow the $160 million they've stolen from thuggish Las Vegas casino fat cat Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). Danny has settled down with his beloved ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts) -- the two are about to celebrate that most romantic of milestones, their second third anniversary. The others have enjoyed the fruits of their labor to varying degrees of excess: Detail man Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) has lost his share of the dough, and then some, in the hip-hotel business, while surveillance geek Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison) works as a stand-up comic and lives at home -- he has barely spent a penny.

The problem is that Benedict, having been tipped off that it was Danny's crew who cleaned out his vaults, wants his money back, with interest. So the 11 gather from all corners of the globe, or at least from this or that state, to plan a new heist so they can get Benedict off their backs.

This new caper takes them to Amsterdam, where they meet with contacts in little cafes and huddle in Spartan hotel rooms, at first scheming to rob an agoraphobic zillionaire (played by Jeroen Krabbé) and later taking on the challenge, thrown down by a cocky thief who goes by the name "The Night Fox" (Vincent Cassel), to steal a hideously gaudy Fabergé egg. To make things more teasingly complicated, Rusty's onetime girlfriend, international crime expert Isabel Lahiri (the lustrously appealing Catherine Zeta-Jones), herself the daughter of a deceased thief, is on to their every move.