It’s not hard to see how The Thieves (2012), co-written and directed by Choi Dong-hoon, could become, more than a decade after its premiere, South Korea’s eighth-highest-grossing movie. This heist comedy is like Ocean’s Eleven (1960), right down to its score’s Rat Pack pomp, if it had breathlessly choreographed action sequences that were a little lax with gravitational rules. It’s the kind of jaunty, effortlessly fun movie that makes you wish from the couch that you were in a theater seat instead, surrounded by an appreciative audience also looking to escape the summer’s heat for a few hours.

Though a little too long (it runs a few minutes south of two hours and 20 minutes), The Thieves is a movie you like living inside of even if, for the characters, there’s nary a thing here reliably comfortable or safe. It circles around two teams of ace burglars — one Chinese and the other Korean — coming together for what’s hoped to be an eye-poppingly big payday. Their sights are set on the Tear of the Sun, a dramatic name for a diamond worth $20 million that a crime lord named Wei Hong’s (Ki Gook-seo) mistress (Ye Soo-jung) nearly always has on her. 

The carefully engineered heist is to take place in an extravagant casino in Macau the mistress is visiting. How it will go is one of the first of many twists Choi has prepared. Betrayals and double-crosses are inevitable when you have a team this big whose trustworthiness is largely based on one’s word. Most of them are narratively satisfying — hit the pleasure center a gasp can induce — though, toward the end of the overlong movie, it wouldn’t be unnatural to wonder when they might stop coming with vague impatience. (While we’re on the subject of quibbles: Choi Young-hwan’s cinematography overlights everything to the point that you might feel a twinge of relief to see a shadow.) 

The Thieves is otherwise knowingly and slickly constructed, abundant in lively dialogue and the kinds of charming performances a movie so inextricable from deceit and other misdeeds requires. They make stabs in the back really hurt. And you ought to want these characters to get away with their crimes, although it’s nearly impossible to feel that much sympathy for a character like this diamond-hoarding mistress when one of the thieves (Kim Hae-sook) talks about being middle-aged and without a savings account, forced to hand off any money she’s accumulated to her needier daughter and son-in-law.

The Thieves has so many characters that some are doomed to fade to the background, there to serve as not much more than extra bodies and hands. Consistent, though, is how much we gravitate toward its women characters, who are nearly universally more cool and cunning than their male counterparts. A favorite is that aforementioned middle-aged woman — she goes by Chewingum — who’s become almost completely hardened until a short-term, mid-film chance at romance gives her some unexpected hope. Another, Yenicall (Jun Ji-hyun), puts you in mind of Selina Kyle, employed for her acrobatic skill and her talent for seduction who’s also always offering funny, sardonic quips that aren’t solicited but are welcome anyway. Like everyone else in the movie, she has something up her sleeve. One of The Thieves’ biggest delights is its reveal of exactly what.