Nick Nolte wears a Casio A201

San Francisco, 1982. Jack Cates is the kind of detective who runs on cigarettes and a short fuse, and the watch on his wrist matches the man: a Casio A201, an inexpensive digital on a metal bracelet, worn on his right hand. Walter Hill's 48 Hrs., often credited as the first true buddy-cop comedy, sets Nick Nolte's rumpled Cates against Eddie Murphy's fast-talking convict Reggie Hammond, sprung from prison for two days to help track down an escaped killer. The A201 was built on Casio's QW103 module, the same movement the company used across several of its early-1980s digitals. It gets a small moment of its own when its alarm sounds and Cates reaches over to silence it. Nolte keeps it on through the rest of the film, a plain budget digital on a leading man at a time when that was still an unusual thing to see.