Chris Cooper wears a Breitling Chronomat

John Wells wrote and directed The Company Men (2010) after two decades running ER and The West Wing. The film follows three employees at a Boston conglomerate through layoffs during the 2008 recession. Ben Affleck plays Bobby Walker, the young sales executive who loses his Porsche. Tommy Lee Jones plays a senior VP who disagrees with the cuts. Chris Cooper plays Phil Woodward, the oldest of the three — a man who has given the company thirty years and finds that the market has no use for him at 60.

The Breitling Chronomat on Cooper's wrist is left over from the good years. Breitling introduced the Chronomat in 1984 as a pilot's chronograph, with rider tabs at the cardinal points and a robust automatic movement. It's a big, confident watch from an era when confidence came easy. On Phil Woodward, it reads as the reward for decades of service — the kind of purchase a man makes when he assumes the paychecks will keep coming. The film is interested in what happens to men when the objects that defined their success become reminders of what they've lost, and the Chronomat does that job without saying a word.