Matthew McConaughey wears a Rolex Datejust

Matthew McConaughey's whole role in The Wolf of Wall Street is one early sequence, and it is the part everyone quotes. He plays Mark Hanna, Jordan Belfort's first boss at the brokerage L.F. Rothschild, who walks the rookie off the trading floor and into a long boozy lunch to explain how the business really works: nobody knows which way a stock will go, it is all 'fugazi,' and a broker's only real job is to keep clients reinvesting so the commissions never stop. Partway through, Hanna starts humming and thumping his chest. That was McConaughey's own pre-take ritual, and DiCaprio asked him to keep it in, which turned a cameo into one of the film's signature moments.

On Hanna's wrist is a two-tone Rolex Datejust, steel and gold on a Jubilee bracelet, the reference usually placed as the 16233. It is a period-correct choice. The two-tone Datejust was the default Wall Street watch of the 1980s, the one a senior man bought once he had arrived. Hodinkee, which catalogued the film's watches, adds a caveat: like several of the movie's Rolexes, this one may be a convincing replica rather than the real thing.

Hanna gets that single sequence and uses it to hand Belfort the whole cynical playbook. The two-tone Datejust is part of the uniform, the watch of a man who already got where Belfort is trying to go.