National Treasure (2004)

National Treasure

Jon Turteltaub's treasure-hunt adventure for Walt Disney Pictures. Historian and amateur cryptologist Benjamin Franklin Gates chases a two-century-old family legend to a fortune the Founding Fathers are said to have hidden, which first means stealing the Declaration of Independence to read the invisible map on its back before a rival team gets there. Nicolas Cage stars with Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, and Jon Voight. (IMDb)

Watches

Rolex Submariner 16610

Worn by Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates. Gates wears a steel Rolex Submariner 16610 through the film, and in one of its cleverest small beats the watch becomes the plot: after paying a clothing-store clerk with an antique $100 bill, Gates realises the bill's reverse hides the next clue, the time on the Independence Hall clock, so to borrow that exact note back he unclasps the Submariner and leaves it as collateral, calling it a valuable diver's watch. It is legible elsewhere too, including the car sequence pictured here; the black dial and aluminium-bezel steel case read as the ref. 16610 Rolex produced from 1988 to 2010. (Watch Fever) Montres de Luxe independently identifies the same steel Rolex Submariner Date without asserting a reference. (Montres de Luxe) BAMF Style quotes the collateral speech, "I have this diver's watch, it's called a Submariner. I dive with this, it's actually quite valuable", describes the steel Submariner Date on its Oyster bracelet, and reaches the same reference on the same reasoning: a 40 mm watch contemporary with the production would be the 16610. (BAMF Style) Hodinkee, crediting props to Robert Griffon Jr., hedges its own reading, "It appears to be the ref. 16610", describing a gloss black dial, aluminum bezel and applied markers with white gold surrounds; it times the collateral scene at 01:12:15, Gates telling the cashier "It's called a Submariner. I dive with this, it's actually quite valuable", and a back-seat phone call at 01:32:56 with the watch worn loose and dangling. (Hodinkee) Prop master Ritchie Kremer, who worked on the sequel, told Hodinkee the Submariner was used again in National Treasure: Book of Secrets and that he believes he bought it for that film, though he no longer recalls how; the studio now holds it. (Hodinkee) One auction record disagrees: Premiere Props offered on 9 December 2012 (lot 593) what it called "Cage's actual hero watch, a Lorus, that he wears in the film", a steel sports watch with a cobalt blue dial, a countdown bezel and a date window, signed LORUS in the lot photograph. No other source puts a blue-dialed watch on Gates and the frames show the black Submariner, so the lot is recorded as a disagreement and not as a second watch. (Premiere Props lot 593)

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