Harrison Ford wears an unidentified watch

In Random Hearts, a shot of Harrison Ford in the back of a car shows the watch on his wrist plainly enough: a round, gold-tone case on a dark leather strap, the crystal flaring white in the window light. The look does not last.

Sydney Pollack's Random Hearts (1999) builds an unlikely romance out of a plane crash. Your spouse dies in the wreck, and then you learn she was seated beside someone else's husband, and that the two of them had been having an affair. Ford plays Sergeant Dutch Van Den Broeck, an internal-affairs investigator with the Washington D.C. police, and Kristin Scott Thomas plays Kay Chandler, a New Hampshire congresswoman in the middle of a reelection campaign. The film is too long and too careful with itself, but Ford and Scott Thomas find a quiet chemistry that nearly carries it.

Dutch works internal affairs, a job built on scrutiny. The watch on his own wrist gives up nothing. The case looks like yellow gold or gold plate and the strap like dark leather, but the dial is blown out in every frame that shows it, and no logo or complication ever resolves. What remains is a modest dress watch, an unshowy choice for an A-list lead and a believable one for a career cop. Nothing in the public record names it, so for now it stays an unidentified watch.