Argo (2012)

Argo

Ben Affleck's drama about the 1980 Tehran exfiltration. Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1979. (IMDb)

Watches

Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea

Worn by Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez. The 2008-era Deepsea is anachronistic for the film's late-1970s setting. (BeckerTime, Watches of Espionage) Montres de Luxe instead describes a steel Rolex Submariner rather than a Sea-Dweller Deepsea, without naming a reference; every specialist source that names a specific reference converges on the Deepsea 116660, supporting the Deepsea identification over the source's less specific Submariner attribution. (Montres de Luxe) Forumamontres member Apia, watching the film on TF1 in May 2015, likewise identified a Sea-Dweller Deepsea that did not exist in 1979, magicrikk had bet on a Submariner before noticing the modern clasp, and Le Güi regretted the anachronism in so careful a film. (Forumamontres; Forumamontres; Forumamontres) Hodinkee's column, which credits props to Michael Sexton, treats the Deepsea as the film's one Rolex and calls it "flat-out wrong" for the period, a 44 mm reference released in 2008 with the Ringlock case; it times a clear view at 00:22:20 as Mendez takes a call from his son with the phone against his watch-bearing arm, and a wide shot at 00:27:45 in the Los Angeles trailer, where the modern clasp shows in close-ups. It repeats as "Urban legend" the story that the props team offered a replica vintage Submariner and Affleck bought a new Deepsea instead, and gives no source for it. (Hodinkee) Dealer Eric Wind told GQ the anachronism was the first thing he noticed: "It was so obvious," he said of a 2000s Sea-Dweller Deepsea in a film set in the late 1970s, "It was about three times the thickness of a Rolex from that period." (GQ)

© Warner Bros. Pictures

Rolex Submariner

Worn by Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez. Mendez wears two Rolex divers, which is why accounts of the film disagree. Deployant, working from a set photograph and a film still, found an older Submariner as well as the modern Deepsea and concluded that one was swapped for the other during filming. (Deployant) BAMF Style places the period-correct watch in many of the Tehran sequences and sets the two side by side: a 40 mm steel diver with a black rotating bezel, a black dial with a date at three o'clock and an Oyster bracelet, against the bulkier 44 mm Deepsea. BAMF defers to Deployant and SwissWatchExpo on the Submariner Date reading but notes that the screen watch appears to lack the Cyclops magnifier a reference 1680 would carry, and suspects a Sea-Dweller 1665 instead. With the date lens unresolved between a Submariner Date and the early Sea-Dweller, the row stays with the Submariner family, the reading both watch-press sources give. It also accounts for Montres de Luxe describing a steel Submariner where others saw the Deepsea. (BAMF Style) Hodinkee's column sees only the Deepsea and mentions no second, period-correct Rolex; the only Submariner it names is the replica vintage Submariner the props team is said, in an account Hodinkee labels urban legend, to have offered Affleck before he chose the Deepsea. (Hodinkee)

© Warner Bros. Pictures