Jason Statham wears a Columbia

There’s a moment in Chaos when Jason Statham, playing Seattle detective Quentin Conners, checks his wrist before ordering a SWAT team to cut the power to a building. The camera stays on the watch for only a few seconds, but it’s enough. You can read the name on the dial.

The movie is Tony Giglio’s 2005 crime thriller. Conners is a suspended detective brought back to negotiate during a bank robbery, with Ryan Phillippe playing his new partner, Shane Dekker. Wesley Snipes plays the robber, who uses chaos theory to hide something much less theoretical - a computer virus designed to skim money from thousands of accounts. The film opened overseas, then went straight to DVD in the United States in 2008.

So what is Statham wearing?

It’s a Columbia field watch with a black dial, steel case, and dark leather strap. It has Arabic numerals with a smaller 24-hour scale inside them, a date window at three, and the Columbia name and diamond logo printed below twelve. “50 METERS” appears lower on the dial.

I like sightings like this because the answer is sitting right there in the frame. We spend a lot of time identifying watches from a bracelet link, a blurred bezel, or a case that appears for half a second. This one doesn’t require much imagination.

The Columbia name is right there below twelve.