Kurt Russell wears an unidentified watch

Slumped in the back of a car in the Los Angeles heat, Eldon Perry stares out the window with a steel watch and a white dial showing at the wrist on the door. Kurt Russell plays Perry in Dark Blue, Ron Shelton's 2002 crime film from a James Ellroy story, a veteran LAPD detective in an elite unit that closes cases by planting evidence and shooting first, set in the days before the 1992 riots break the city open.

Perry is a third-generation cop raised on the department's worst habits, and the film follows him as the verdict in the Rodney King beating lands and the lie he has lived by comes apart in the streets. The watch is a plain steel sports piece on a bracelet, a working cop's watch, but the dial gives up no logo in the frame and the brand stays unidentified.

It is the watch of a man who believes he is the law right up until the city tells him otherwise. Dark Blue ends with Perry confessing in front of the brass, the badge and the bloodline suddenly worth nothing against what he has done.