Al Pacino wears a Cartier Ceinture

Near the end of Donnie Brasco, Lefty Ruggiero comes home to empty his pockets. He has been called to a meeting he knows he will not walk away from, so he lays out what he wants left behind: a medallion, a pinky ring, and the watch off his wrist, set in a drawer for his family. Al Pacino plays Lefty, the aging Bonanno soldier in Mike Newell's 1997 film who vouches for a younger man calling himself Donnie Brasco, not knowing he is an undercover FBI agent named Joseph Pistone (Johnny Depp). Vouching for him is what gets Lefty killed.

The watch is read as a Cartier Ceinture on a multi-tone gold bracelet. Ceinture is French for belt, and the case earns the name: a stepped gold case, nearly square with the corners shaved off, so the profile reads like a buckle, a seven-sided crown set into a slot along the case step. The dial wears the Roman numerals that are a Cartier signature. The Ceinture is one of the rarer shapes Cartier Paris made, a dress watch and a quiet cousin of the Tank.

The identification is not settled. The Cartier reading starts with Wrist Enthusiast, which noted that very little is on record about what Pacino wore and named the Ceinture from the two-tiered case and the Cartier numerals, not from any close-up. Time+Tide agreed it looks like a Ceinture, while granting that the film offers few clear views of the wrist. No prop record or word from Cartier has ever confirmed it, and no reference number has surfaced. The watch barely shows on screen, which leaves its plainest moment the one where Lefty unbuckles it and shuts it in a drawer.