Jason Statham wears a Panerai Luminor

There is a moment in Homefront when Phil Broker, a retired DEA agent who has moved his daughter to a quiet stretch of Louisiana, stands in a parking lot trading stares with the local sheriff, one hand cocked on his hip. The pose does the watch a favor. On his wrist sits a Panerai Luminor, and the camera catches it square: the polished steel cushion case, the black dial with its luminous markers, the small seconds tucked at nine, and on the right flank the lever-locked bridge that clamps down over the crown. That crown guard is one of the most recognizable case profiles in modern watchmaking. You do not need to read a single word on the dial to know what it is.

The reference is the Luminor Marina 1950 3 Days Automatic, the PAM00312: 44mm of brushed steel, a black sandwich dial, a date at three, run by Panerai's in-house P.9000 movement. It is also the exact watch Statham was photographed wearing on the street in the late summer of 2013, a few months before the film opened. He has never been shy about the brand, and he tends to bring his own Panerais to a set. The one on Broker's wrist looks like it came straight from his own drawer.

The role had a history of being handed along. Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay from Chuck Logan's novel and first meant the lead for himself. Earlier still he had drafted the story as a Rambo sequel, a widowed John Rambo guarding his daughter from small-town drug dealers, before shelving it for a decade because the quiet domestic version would not fit the character audiences knew. By the time Gary Fleder directed it, Stallone had moved to the producer's chair and handed Broker to Statham, who carries the part the way he carries the watch, without ceremony, like it was always his.