Jason Statham wears a Panerai Submersible

Before Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre ever reached a screen, Panerai released the photographs. Jason Statham, dark clothes, a slab of matte black carbon on his wrist, shot by the photographer Daniel Smith. The watch was a Panerai Submersible Carbotech, and it was there by arrangement. Panerai had a deal with Guy Ritchie's production, a film then titled Five Eyes and shot in Qatar and Turkey, to supply two of its dive watches: the Submersible Goldtech and this one.

Carbotech is Panerai's own material: sheets of carbon fibre pressed together with a polymer called PEEK, lighter than titanium and harder than steel. Because the sheets shear differently each time they are cut, no two cases share the same matte striation. The watch is 47mm, water-resistant to 300 metres, runs Panerai's in-house P.9010 with a three-day reserve, and retailed around eighteen thousand dollars.

Fortune wears two Panerais in the finished film. The Carbotech is the one Panerai sent. The other, a green-dialed Radiomir, was never part of the deal, and watch writers have wondered whether Statham, a Panerai owner for decades, brought it from his own collection.