Simon Baker wears a Rolex Submariner

Margin Call unfolds over a single panicked night at an investment bank that is, in all but name, Lehman Brothers. Simon Baker plays Jared Cohen, a division head who, once the firm grasps that its mortgage securities are worthless, pushes to dump them on the market before the rest of Wall Street wakes up. At one point the camera gives his watch its own close-up.

It is a Rolex Submariner, and it is gold. More precisely, a two-tone Submariner in gold and steel with a blue dial, the mix Rolex calls Rolesor. That is worth getting right, because it is not the understated steel diver that became Wall Street shorthand. It is the showier version, the one that catches the light across a table. The French watch site Montres de Luxe, which logged the appearance, records it as a Rolex Submariner "en or et acier avec cadran bleu," gold and steel with a blue dial.

The two-tone Submariner sits near the top of the range without crossing into solid gold, expensive and unmistakably so. On the wrist of a bank executive in a film about a firm choosing self-preservation over everyone else, it is exactly as conspicuous as it looks. The film never comments on it. It just keeps it in frame.