James Marsden wears a Hamilton American Classic

James Marsden has the least glamorous job in the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. He plays Tom Wachowski, the sheriff of a small Montana town called Green Hills, which is to say he plays the closest thing to a normal adult in a franchise about a wisecracking blue alien hedgehog. And by Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), the props people have quietly handed that normal adult a genuinely lovely watch.

It's a Hamilton Intra-Matic Auto Chrono, and it is not a toy. Hamilton built it as a faithful reissue of its Chronograph A from 1968, right down to the panda dial - here in a fresh green-and-white pairing, with the H-31 automatic movement humming away for about sixty hours on a wind. The kind of watch a design nerd notices, on the wrist of a guy whose entire job in these films is to look unfazed while a CGI hedgehog wrecks his living room.

I like that it's an upgrade. In the earlier movies Tom wore a plain Hamilton Khaki Field, a soldier's watch, all legibility and no fuss. Three films in, the small-town sheriff has graduated to a 1968 chronograph. His world keeps getting more ridiculous, and somewhere in the costume trailer, his taste keeps getting better.