Ben Affleck wears a Piaget Polo

John Wells wrote and directed The Company Men (2010), about executives thrown out of work when the 2008 crash hits their conglomerate. Ben Affleck plays Bobby Walker, the youngest of them, a sales manager who keeps the country club membership and the Porsche running for a while after the job is gone, then ends up swinging a hammer on his brother-in-law's construction crew. Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper play the older men who fall further.

The watch is a Piaget Polo FortyFive Chronograph, and Piaget arranged for it to be there. When the film came out the company said it was proud to be featured in it, with Affleck's Bobby wearing the FortyFive, the sporty titanium-and-steel version of the Polo that Piaget had launched in 2009. In the office still here, phone to his ear in a white shirt and tie, the watch reads as a silver chronograph with subdials on an integrated bracelet, which is what the FortyFive Chronograph is.

The Polo itself goes back to 1979, when Piaget built it for the American market in gold, the case and the bracelet running together in one unbroken line. The FortyFive moved that idea into sport, a forty-five millimeter case in titanium and steel. On Bobby's wrist it is the watch of a man who was doing well, which is the part of his life the film is mostly about losing.