Robert De Niro wears a Breguet Classique

Carl Van Loon sees through Eddie Morra almost at once. Robert De Niro plays the financier in Neil Burger's Limitless (2011) as a man who has read enough people to know when one of them is running on something he cannot explain, and decides he does not care as long as the returns hold. In a quiet sit-down, dressed in a gray pinstripe suit, a sliver of his watch shows at the cuff.

It is a Breguet Classique, reference 5197. Writing up De Niro's screen watches, Oracle of Time identified it as the Classique 5197BA in white gold; the model's details fit what the watch press describes, a silvered dial hand-engraved with Breguet's barleycorn guilloché, Roman numerals, and a date at six on a black leather strap. Breguet's heritage runs as deep as watchmaking gets: Abraham-Louis Breguet invented the tourbillon and made the engine-turned dial and the hollow-tipped Breguet hands his signatures, two centuries before this film. In the still it stays mostly under Van Loon's cuff, a glint of dial and case, easy to miss.