Jason Statham wears a Panerai Luminor

The Transporter (2002) opens on a bank robbery, and the getaway driver is timing it on his watch. His name is Frank Martin. He lives by three rules, never change the deal, no names, never open the package, and the film is the story of him breaking all of them. Louis Leterrier and Corey Yuen built it around Jason Statham, until then a Guy Ritchie supporting player, and made him a leading man.

The watch is a Panerai Luminor, reference PAM 074: a 40mm titanium chronograph on a brown leather strap, made for only a few years around the turn of the century. Panerai was still a niche Italian maker then, not the brand it became. The surprise is what runs inside. The 074 is powered by the Zenith El Primero, one of the great automatic chronographs, a column-wheel movement that runs at 36,000 beats an hour, fast enough to time a getaway to a fraction of a second. Panerai relabeled it the OP IV, but it is El Primero underneath.

The producers gave the watch real close-ups, and it worked. The Transporter is where the action-hero Panerai was born, and where Statham's long run with the brand began.