Keanu Reeves wears a Carl F. Bucherer Manero AutoDate

In 2021, while John Wick: Chapter 4 was still shooting, the chief executive of Carl F. Bucherer posted a photograph from the set. Sascha Moeri stood with Keanu Reeves and mentioned in his caption that Reeves would once again be wearing the Manero AutoDate. The announcement could come from the watchmaker rather than the studio because the watch had been part of the franchise's furniture from the start: director Chad Stahelski is a longtime ambassador for the Lucerne brand, Reeves had worn a steel Manero AutoDate with a white dial and black leather strap since the first film in 2014, and by the third film the partnership was confident enough to stage the rooftop fight at the New York Continental in front of Carl F. Bucherer product films playing behind the glass for more than ten minutes.

Chapter 4 gave the watch its biggest canvas. The story runs 169 minutes and moves from New York to the Moroccan desert, where the excommunicated Wick kills the Elder, then to the Osaka Continental, to Berlin, and finally to Paris, where Wick and the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont finalize the terms of a formal duel: pistols at sunrise at Sacre-Coeur, moderated by a High Table official called the Harbinger. It was the first film in the series written without franchise creator Derek Kolstad, with Shay Hatten and Michael Finch taking over the script. And it gives the Manero its own insert shot: pistol in one hand, forearm raised, the pale dial riding the inside of the wrist, where Wick wears it. Press coverage of the films ties that habit to the way soldiers wear watches in combat, the crystal turned inward to protect it.

The watch is the plainest object in the film: 38 millimeters of stainless steel, a white dial with applied indices and a date window at three o'clock, an automatic movement with a 42-hour power reserve. The duel goes off as agreed. When it is over, the Harbinger grants Wick his freedom from the High Table, and John reflects on his life and his marriage before collapsing from his injuries. The film took in 447.3 million dollars worldwide, the most of any entry in the franchise, and the watch on the inside of Reeves's wrist had not changed in nine years.