Jude Law wears an unidentified watch

Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley sends Tom Ripley, played by Matt Damon, to the Italian coast to fetch the wealthy, careless Dickie Greenleaf, played by Jude Law, back home. Ripley comes to covet Dickie's life, then takes it, and takes his watch along with it. In the film's sunlit boat scenes Dickie reclines shirt-sleeved on the white deck, the Tyrrhenian behind him, and the watch sits loose on his wrist.

It is a plain steel piece on a bright Milanese mesh bracelet, a round case worn at an angle that keeps the dial half-turned from the camera, no brand the frame will give up. That modesty is the surprising part. Wealthy, careless Dickie wears something almost anonymous, the kind of watch you would never look at twice, and when Tom takes Dickie's life he takes the watch too. A piece this plain makes the theft feel less like a robbery than what it really is, one man stepping into another's identity and walking off with everything on it.