Denzel Washington wears a Suunto Core All Black

Robert McCall times his fights. In The Equalizer (2014), Antoine Fuqua's adaptation of the old CBS series, Denzel Washington plays McCall as a soft-spoken man working at a Boston home-improvement store, a former Marine and Defense Intelligence Agency operative who comes out of a quiet life to protect a teenager, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, from the Russian mob. Before he clears a room, he checks his watch, starts a count, does the work, and checks it again.

The watch is a Suunto Core All Black, reference SS014279010: a Finnish outdoor instrument with an altimeter, barometer, and compass, the kind of thing that sells for a couple hundred dollars rather than a Swiss luxury price. The famous part, the giant stopwatch McCall runs in close-up, is not a real Core function. The filmmakers added that oversized timer in post and gave it a blue tint, and when people asked whether Suunto had made a special version, the company said it had not.

Washington kept the same Core for The Equalizer 2 in 2018, and switched only for the third film in 2023, to a Suunto 9 Peak.