Bruce Willis wears a Hamilton Khaki Aviation

By 2007, John McClane had outlived his own genre. Live Free or Die Hard drops the analog cop into a digital crisis, a coordinated hack called a fire sale that takes down the country's infrastructure, and asks a man who solves problems with a handgun to chase people who do everything with a keyboard. He spends the film paired with a young hacker because he cannot do the one thing the plot requires. On his wrist is a watch with the same mismatch.

It is a Hamilton Khaki Aviation ETO, a pilot's chronograph. ETO stands for Estimated Time Over, and the watch is built to help a flier time a leg of a route and know when he will cross a given point. None of which is any use to a New York detective on foot in a cyberattack. Hamilton, recounting its own film history, lists McClane in Live Free or Die Hard wearing the Khaki Aviation ETO right beside Will Smith in I Am Legend that same year in a Khaki Aviation Twilight. The brand outfitted two 2007 blockbusters with flight watches for men who never get near a cockpit.

Hamilton stayed with the franchise. By A Good Day to Die Hard in 2013, McClane had moved to a Hamilton Jazzmaster and his son to a Khaki X-Patrol. The ETO is the plainest watch on any McClane wrist across the films, which is the right fit for a cop who is forever the cheapest, most disposable thing in a building full of money and machines. He survives anyway.