Kevin Spacey wears a Bulova Surf King

Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997), set in 1953 Los Angeles, gives Kevin Spacey the role of Jack Vincennes, the celebrity narcotics cop who moonlights as technical adviser on a Dragnet-style TV show and takes kickbacks from the tabloid man Sid Hudgens for staged arrests. On his wrist is a Bulova Surf King, a stainless sport watch with a clean white dial marked only by a stylized 12, sub-seconds, and a brown lizard-grain band. There is a quiet irony in it that BAMF Style caught: the Surf King was made around 1963 to 1965, more than a decade after the film is set, so the most appearance-conscious man in the picture wears a watch that could not have existed yet. Vincennes dresses like a movie star because he half-believes he is one, and the watch is part of that costume, even if the prop department had to reach ten years into the future to find it. Guy Pearce's straight-arrow Ed Exley gets a Rolex in the same film; the show-pony cop gets the modest Bulova, which tells you who actually has the money.