Matthew McConaughey wears a Chopard Mille Miglia

Brandon Lang came to New York as a washed-up quarterback and turned into the hottest handicapper in the business, and his reward arrives in a small black case. Two for the Money, directed by D.J. Caruso and released by Universal Pictures in October 2005, follows Lang from a Las Vegas call center into the orbit of Walter Abrams, who runs a sports-betting advisory empire and recruits talent like Brandon to front it. After a long winning run, Walter hands Brandon the case across the room. Brandon hesitates, looks at Walter's wife Toni, and opens it. In voiceover, Al Pacino's Walter sells it: "It's a Chopard. Designed for car racing. Guy won six times at Le Mans wearing it. Put it on, maybe you'll start winning."

The pitch is built on a real watch and a real driver. Chopard launched its Mille Miglia line in 1988, the year it began sponsoring the historic Italian road race, and the collection became the company's motorsport signature. The man who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans six times is Jacky Ickx, the Belgian who took the race in 1969 and four more times through 1982, and who has been a Chopard ambassador since 1989. Chopard later put his name on a run of Mille Miglia editions, the first in 1999. Walter's two sentences, a racing Chopard worn by the six-time Le Mans winner, point to one watch in the catalog: the Mille Miglia.

What the pitch leaves out is that Ickx won none of those races wearing one. His Le Mans victories were over before the Mille Miglia existed, and his tie to Chopard came later still. Walter is not really describing a watch. He is describing what he wants Brandon to believe it will do, the same move he runs on his clients every day, and Brandon puts it on.