Pierce Brosnan wears a Panerai Luminor

Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer (2010) casts Pierce Brosnan as Adam Lang, a former British prime minister modelled on Tony Blair, holed up on a wintry Massachusetts island while accusations build that he authorised the CIA's rendition and torture of terror suspects. A ghostwriter arrives to finish Lang's memoirs. The last one washed up dead on the beach.

Through the loose, off-duty half of the film, in a track jacket and an open collar, Lang wears a steel sports watch on a metal bracelet. Collectors who have looked closely read it as a Panerai Luminor Marina, the steel diver the Florentine brand built its name on, made for the frogmen of the Italian navy and later for everyone else. Brosnan wears Panerai in his own life, so the watch sits easily on him.

The film never lingers on the dial long enough to fix an exact reference, and once Lang is back in a shirt and tie for the public part of his day he switches to a dressier gold watch. What is steady through the island scenes is the steel Panerai on his wrist.