Martin Sheen wears a Seiko 6105-8110

Watch collectors call the Seiko 6105-8110 "the Captain Willard." That is how firmly this film attached itself to the reference. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), written by Coppola and John Milius with narration by Michael Herr, sends Martin Sheen's Captain Benjamin Willard up a river in Vietnam to assassinate a rogue Green Beret colonel. The production was nearly as chaotic as the war it depicted. Sheen had a heart attack on set in the Philippines. Brando arrived overweight and without having read the source material. A typhoon leveled the sets. The cast includes Robert Duvall, a 14-year-old Laurence Fishburne, and Harrison Ford in a brief early role.

The 6105-8110 is a 150m automatic diver with a distinctive asymmetric cushion case, produced by Seiko from 1970 to 1977. American servicemen bought them at PX counters across Southeast Asia during the war, which is exactly how Willard would have gotten his. It is a no-frills tool watch with a hardlex crystal, broad lume markers, and the 6105B movement. It looks right on the wrist of a man spending weeks on a patrol boat. The prop department got this one right, whether by accident or on purpose.

Set Willard's Seiko against Marlon Brando's Rolex GMT-Master 1675 on Colonel Kurtz, and the difference between the two men is right there on their wrists. Willard wears the watch a soldier buys at a military exchange. Kurtz wears the watch an officer buys because he can. The Seiko is a tool. The Rolex is a choice.