Donald Pleasence wears a Rolex Datejust

Manhattan in 1997 is one giant maximum-security prison, and when Air Force One goes down inside it, the government's only option is to send in Snake Plissken, a one-eyed ex-soldier, to pull the President out before a summit tape he is carrying is lost for good. John Carpenter directed Escape from New York from a script he wrote with Nick Castle, casting Kurt Russell as Snake, Lee Van Cleef as the police commissioner running the operation, and Donald Pleasence as the captured President.

The President's watch is one more thing the film never stops to show. A French watch-in-film column lists it as a yellow-gold Rolex Datejust, but the claim has no source behind it, and the watch does not come into clear view in any still from the picture. Every watch the movie actually cares about belongs to Snake: the digital countdown strapped to his wrist, ticking off the hours he has left to live. The Datejust, if that is what it is, stays in the background, on a president who spends most of the film as a hostage.