Charles Melton wears a Casio G-Shock

Alex Garland co-directed Warfare with Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who served in Iraq, and the film rebuilds a single 2006 mission in Ramadi from the memories of the men who were there. It runs about 95 minutes, with no flashbacks and no speeches about duty. The cast skews young on purpose, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Michael Gandolfini, Noah Centineo, because the men it depicts were.

The Casio G-Shock is the default watch of military service. Kikuo Ibe designed the first one in 1983, after dropping his father's watch and resolving to build something unbreakable. The DW-5600, the square resin model most people picture when they hear G-Shock, costs about fifty dollars and shrugs off almost anything. On a dark wrist in a firefight it gives nothing away, with no shiny bezel to catch light and nothing on it worth noticing.

Watch spotters have put Charles Melton's character, Jake, in a black DW-5600E-1V, though that comes from watch-ID sites rather than the production, and no clear still has surfaced to confirm it. What the film does make plain is what it leaves out: the Breitling and Luminox pieces that sell themselves on tactical credibility. A SEAL in Ramadi reaches for the cheapest reliable thing on the shelf.