Jason Statham wears a Panerai Submersible

Lee Christmas is Barney Ross's knife man, the one member of the Expendables who never needs replacing, which is the running joke of a franchise built on aging action stars. Patrick Hughes directed the third one in 2014, stuffing Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, and Mel Gibson into a cast already too big for the runtime, and pulling the rating down to PG-13, a first for the series and a decision that pleased no one.

Christmas wears a Panerai, and so does the rest of the crew. By the third film, the team is issued matching references: the Luminor Submersible 1950 Amagnetic, reference PAM00389, on Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews. It is 47mm of titanium with a ceramic bezel, and under the dial it does something Panerai had never tried. The P.9000 movement sits inside a soft-iron case that shields it from magnetism. The 389 was the brand's first anti-magnetic watch, a dive maker borrowing an engineer's trick.

There is one exception, the boss. At a point in the film, Stallone also turns up in a hundred-thousand-dollar Richard Mille, while the men he commands all wear the same titanium Panerai.