Matthew Modine wears an unidentified watch

Joker wears a peace symbol button and "Born to Kill" on his helmet. When a colonel asks about the contradiction, Joker calls it "the duality of man" — the line everyone remembers from Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam film. Matthew Modine plays Joker as someone maintaining ironic distance from a war that keeps closing in. He survives the nightmare of Parris Island, gets assigned to Stars and Stripes, and ends up in Hue during the Tet Offensive anyway.

In the helicopter scenes, Joker wears a watch on his left wrist with what appears to be a light-colored dial on a metal bracelet. Most American servicemen in Vietnam bought watches at post exchanges rather than receiving military-issued ones. The PX system stocked everything from cheap Timex models to Seiko 6105 dive watches, and soldiers bought based on what they could afford and what looked good. The brand on Joker's wrist hasn't been identified.