Jean-Claude Van Damme wears a Hamilton Khaki X-Wind

Most action stars would never agree to a film this honest. JCVD stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as a fictionalized version of himself, broke, losing a custody battle, watching Steven Seagal take roles from him, who walks into a Brussels post office during a robbery and is mistaken by the police for the hostage-taker. Director Mabrouk El Mechri treats Van Damme with genuine affection while refusing to let him off the hook. The film's centerpiece is a six-minute monologue, shot in a single take, in which Van Damme rises above the set and talks about his marriages, his money, and his substance abuse with a rawness that caught everyone off guard. The man famous for doing the splits sits in a chair and cries, and it is the best performance of his career.

The Hamilton Khaki X-Wind on his wrist is a pilot's watch worn by a man not playing a pilot. It is an aviation chronograph built on a Valjoux 7750 movement, with a drift-angle calculator on the bezel for working out crosswind corrections on approach, a genuine pilot's tool that most owners keep for the look. Whether it was Van Damme's own watch or a wardrobe choice is not documented; Hamilton placed its watches across many films of the period. On Van Damme, playing himself in a post office siege, the watch needs no character justification, because here the character is barely separable from the man.