Harrison Ford wears an unidentified watch

Harrison Ford spent decades playing men you trust, which is exactly what Robert Zemeckis needed. In What Lies Beneath (2000), Ford plays Norman Spencer, a Vermont research scientist helping his wife Claire, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, through what looks like a nervous breakdown. We meet him in the register the whole film depends on, propped up shirtless in bed with a laptop while Claire reads beside him under a warm bedside lamp. On his left wrist is a watch.

It is a plain one. A round polished case, a light silver dial, a dark brown leather strap, the crown at three, worn close to the wrist. The dial never turns far enough toward the camera to give up a name or a model, and no make is legible in any frame. What can honestly be said is only what the eye confirms: an understated steel dress watch on brown leather, the kind chosen to be unremarkable.

That restraint fits the trick the film is playing. Ford's everyman-you-trust persona is the bait, and the late reveal that Norman is the killer turns every reassuring scene before it, this quiet bedroom moment included, into something colder.