Denzel Washington wears a Rolex Submariner

Edward Zwick directed Courage Under Fire (1996), a Gulf War drama in which Lt. Colonel Nathaniel Serling (Denzel Washington) is assigned to investigate whether a fallen helicopter pilot, Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan), deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor, all while quietly carrying his own friendly-fire incident. Serling drinks heavily and lies to his superiors as he tries to give a dead officer the recognition she earned without facing what he did.

A steel dive watch with a black dial, a black rotating bezel, and an Oyster-style bracelet sits on Washington's right wrist, identified by watch-spotting sources as a Rolex Submariner. The brand is not legible on screen, but the watch is plainly a Submariner-style diver, the kind of conventional, expensive piece that reads as career-officer rather than enlisted.