Forest Whitaker wears a Hamilton Khaki Field

Jérôme Salle's Zulu is a crime thriller set in post-apartheid Cape Town, where two policemen chase a wave of killings back to a synthetic drug and the country's buried history. Forest Whitaker plays Ali Sokhela, who runs the homicide squad and carries his own scars from the apartheid era. Orlando Bloom plays his reckless partner.

The film closed the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and it did so on Hamilton's tab: the American watch brand sponsored Zulu and put its Khaki line on the whole cast. Whitaker's Sokhela wears the Khaki Field Titanium, a 42mm titanium field watch with a black dial under a sapphire crystal, automatic, on a black fabric strap. The design traces back to the plain, legible watches Hamilton made for American soldiers in the World Wars, which is most of what a field watch is doing on the wrist of a working detective.

For Hamilton this was routine. The brand has spent decades as Hollywood's default field watch, and the trade press filed Zulu into the same archive as Blood Diamond, where Jennifer Connelly wore a Hamilton Khaki King, and earlier placements in Cliffhanger and I Am Legend. Because the placement was Hamilton's own, there is no guesswork about the watch on Whitaker's wrist.