Louis C.K. wears a Rolex GMT-Master II

Stoddard Thorsen spends American Hustle trying to finish a story about ice fishing. Bradley Cooper's Richie DiMaso, his own junior agent, cuts him off every time. Louis C.K. plays Thorsen as the FBI lifer who has seen how these operations end and no longer has the energy to stop the one in front of him, and the film keeps him in the margins, talking to a wall.

On his wrist is the watch the watch world will not let American Hustle live down. It is a Rolex GMT-Master II in solid yellow gold, reference 116718LN, with a black ceramic bezel. The film is set in 1978. Rolex did not put a Cerachrom ceramic bezel on the gold GMT-Master II until the mid-2000s, which makes Thorsen's watch close to thirty years early. A French watch magazine reviewing the film called it simply un bel anachronisme, a fine anachronism, and a dealer cataloguing the goof noted the other problem: a career FBI man could not have afforded a solid gold Rolex in the first place.

It is the most-mocked of several period mistakes on the film's FBI side, where Cooper's Richie also wears a late-2000s IWC. The irony is that Louis C.K., who in real life wears a steel Submariner that Chris Rock gave him, ended up strapped into the flashiest wrong watch in the movie.