Ryan Reynolds wears a Panerai Luminor

In a motel lot at night, the new Damian Hale reaches up to steady a frightened woman, and a big cushion-cased watch slides out from his cuff. Self/less (2015), directed by Tarsem Singh, sells a science-fiction premise on an old fear: a dying New York real-estate billionaire, played by Ben Kingsley, pays to move his mind into a young, healthy body, played by Ryan Reynolds. The company tells him the body was grown in a lab, but it belonged to a real man, whose memories do not stay buried.

The watch is a Panerai Luminor Marina, reference PAM00351. It is a 44mm case in brushed titanium, light for its size, with the brand's signature lever clamping the crown on the left. The dial is the unusual part: a tobacco brown sandwich dial, the brown layer cut away so the luminous layer beneath shows through the numerals, with gold-toned hands. Inside is Panerai's in-house P.9000, an automatic with a three-day reserve. Panerai stopped making this one around 2017.

It fits the life the procedure sells. Shedding does not just give Damian a younger body; it gives him a new name, a New Orleans apartment, and the spending money to furnish a second life. The titanium Panerai is part of that package, the kind of watch the money comes with.