Jeremy Renner wears a Rolex Submariner

Midway through Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, William Brandt stands in a dim sandstone interior in a white dress shirt, both arms locked out in front of him, aiming a black semi-automatic pistol two-handed. Jeremy Renner plays Brandt, and the first thing the film tells you about him is a lie. He introduces himself as an IMF analyst. He is not. Brad Bird directed the picture from a screenplay by André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, and Renner plays Brandt as a man pretending to be a desk jockey while carrying the reflexes and the guilt of a field operative. By the Dubai sequences he is dropping down ventilation shafts and fighting alongside Ethan Hunt.

On the wrist gripping that pistol is a Rolex Submariner Date, reference 116610. You cannot read it in this frame, where the gun and Brandt's own hands cover most of the case, but the watch publication Bob's Watches identified it as the steel 116610, the version with a black dial and a black Cerachrom ceramic bezel. The 116610LN arrived in 2010, the first Submariner Date to swap Rolex's old aluminum bezel insert for the scratch-proof ceramic one, riding the slightly broader case with thicker lugs and crown guards that collectors call the Maxi. For a film shot in 2011, it is the current Submariner of its moment, era-correct down to the year.

There is a small joke buried in the choice. The Submariner has been the default wristwatch of movie spies since Sean Connery wore one in Dr. No, so handing one to an IMF agent is the on-the-nose pick, and it is also the right one. As Bob's Watches put it, the watch does its job even without the Q Branch additions of buzz-saw bezels or magnetic-field generators. It is not a gadget. It is a real diver's watch, capable and unflashy, which is the same trick Brandt is running on everyone around him: conservative enough to pass for an analyst, tough enough for the job he actually does. Renner keeps the same watch on through the formal scenes and the rough ones, and Bird's set pieces were precise enough to revive a franchise that had stalled.