Pierce Brosnan wears a Speake-Marin Piccadilly

On a beach club in Abu Dhabi, Pierce Brosnan reclines on a blue lounger in sunglasses and a pale linen shirt, a newspaper open across his lap and a woman in a black bikini stretched out beside him. He plays Richard Pace, the gentleman thief at the center of The Misfits, Renny Harlin's 2021 heist picture about a crew that sets out to steal gold from a maximum-security prison in the United Arab Emirates. Harlin, the Finnish director who made Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, was working three decades past those blockbusters here, and the film went straight to video on demand. Tim Roth, Nick Cannon and Jamie Chung fill out the crew.

As Pace holds up the paper, a watch slides into view on his left wrist, a round case in warm gold on a dark brown leather strap, a cream dial, a prominent crown, a small seconds register tucked low and off to one side. The case shape, the slim curved lugs, and that off-center dial fit a Speake-Marin Piccadilly, the round line that has anchored the brand since Peter Speake-Marin, a British-born independent watchmaker, founded his house in 2002 and named the design after the London street. What makes it more than a costume choice is that Brosnan is Speake-Marin's real-life ambassador, and the relationship predates the film. The two met on the set of Survivor in 2015, where Speake-Marin consulted for Brosnan's role as a villain posing as a watchmaker, and Brosnan came away owning a Piccadilly Resilience he has called a gift from Peter. So when Pace flashes gold from a deck chair, the actor is wearing a maker he personally represents, which fits the character too, a thief with nothing left to prove about his taste leafing through the paper while a desert heist that wants to be Ocean's Eleven gathers around him.