Damian Young wears a Benyar Chronograph

J Blakeson's I Care a Lot (2021) is a film about legal predation, the story of how Rosamund Pike's Marla Grayson games court-appointed guardianship to strip vulnerable seniors of their freedom and their savings. Damian Young plays Sam Rice, one of the figures inside the machinery that keeps her scheme looking aboveboard. The close-up that catches his watch is a quiet one: he rests his chin against his hand, elbow planted, and the chronograph sits at the bottom of the frame, turned toward the camera as if it wanted to be read.

And it can be, in the most literal way. The leather strap is embossed with a single word, BENYAR, legible right there in the frame. No detective work, no guessing. The brand is stamped on the watch.

What the strap carries is a steel multi-subdial chronograph with a blue dial on a tan leather band, the busy tri-compax layout and slide-rule outer ring openly borrowed from the Breitling Navitimer. Benyar is an inexpensive contemporary Chinese microbrand that builds its catalogue around exactly that homage, a watch designed to read as a pilot's chronograph at a fraction of the price; the specific reference does not survive the resolution, only the brand. There is a small joke in the casting of the prop. The whole engine of the film is a cheap arrangement dressed up to look legitimate, and on the wrist of one of its functionaries sits a budget Navitimer impersonator pretending to be a Breitling. The watch wears the same idea as the man.