Robert De Niro wears a Jardur Bezelmeter 950

John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998) drops a team of mercenaries into France to steal a briefcase whose contents the film never reveals. Robert De Niro plays Sam, a former intelligence man who keeps his real name and his employer to himself, alongside Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard and Sean Bean, through two of the best car chases ever staged in Europe. The watch on Sam's wrist shows most clearly when he raises a weapon.

It is a vintage Jardur Bezelmeter 950, the earliest of the line, known by its oval pushers and cathedral hands, a steel case with a black dial on a leather strap. Jardur was a New York outfit founded in 1937 by a pilot named Samuel Klepper that began in aircraft instruments and moved into watches in the 1940s. The Bezelmeter is an aviation chronograph built around a Valjoux 72, with a rotating countdown bezel to track flight time and a red degree scale on the dial for holding a standard-rate turn, sold in small numbers through military post exchanges.

It is exactly the kind of obscure, functional American tool watch that suits a man who hides everything else about himself, in a film whose set pieces all turn on timing. The story among collectors, told by The Watch Spot and repeated by BAMF Style, is that De Niro needed a watch when the French shoot began, a Parisian dealer supplied a Bezelmeter, and the actor liked it enough to keep it, though even the people who tell it call that part unverified. The watch is so far under the radar that a French site logged it as an Omega Speedmaster, which is how this sighting briefly existed twice.