Matt Damon wears a Timex Ironman

On the stone steps of a Marseille apartment block, Bill Baker looks like exactly what he is: an Oklahoma oil-rig hand a long way from home. Work boots, jeans, a tank top, a camo cap, ink up one arm. Matt Damon plays him in Stillwater (2021), Tom McCarthy's drama loosely drawn from the Amanda Knox case, a roughneck who travels to Marseille to try to clear his daughter of a murder she says she did not commit. On his wrist is a small black digital watch.

It is a Timex Ironman, the digital runner's watch with lap and split timers and the Indiglo backlight that floods the face blue-green in the dark. It is a stopwatch built for triathletes, worn by a man who does heavy physical work all day and never runs a step for sport. On screen it never resolves past a black digital face on a black strap, with no logo a viewer can read. The enthusiast who eventually tracked down the exact reference admitted that at first he took it for a Casio, and no close-up in the film ever proves him right.