Jason Statham wears a Panerai Luminor

The shot is dark, the way most of The Expendables is dark. Jason Statham, playing the mercenary Lee Christmas, sits with one hand near his face, and a watch shows at his wrist. The film came out in 2010, Sylvester Stallone's reunion of action-movie veterans, a crew of mercenaries hired by a man called Mr. Church to fly to a small island and remove its dictator. Christmas is Barney Ross's partner.

The watch is a Panerai Luminor Marina, the blacked-out reference PAM00004. Its case is PVD-coated steel, dark instead of bright, with a small running-seconds dial at nine and a hand-wound movement inside. It is an early Luminor Marina from the late 1990s, a watch collectors now chase. In the close frames you can read the dark case, the black dial, the glow of the numerals, and the single line of text under the center.

It is also what the rest of the team wear. Line the crew up and the same blacked-out Marina repeats down the row. Barney Ross is the exception. Stallone, who collects Panerai, wears his own piece as Ross, a limited-edition Luminor 1950 Regatta Rattrapante, reference PAM332, with a split-seconds chronograph and a busier dial that carries two lines of text where the crew watches carry one. Lee Christmas wears one of the plain ones.