Paul Newman wears a Bulova 4420101

Michael Gallagher runs a liquor wholesaler in Miami and has nothing to do with the disappearance of a union official, which does not stop a leaked federal file from putting his name in the newspaper. Sydney Pollack directed Absence of Malice from a script by Kurt Luedtke, who had run the Detroit Free Press newsroom before he wrote it, and the film watches a reporter, played by Sally Field, learn what a story does to the people in it. Paul Newman plays Gallagher. Wilford Brimley turns up late as the Justice Department man who pulls the whole mess apart in a single long scene.

On Gallagher's wrist is a steel watch on an integrated bracelet, the kind of design Gerald Genta launched with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in 1972. It is not an Audemars Piguet. BAMF Style reads it as a Bulova ref. 4420101, one of the Royal Oak homages Bulova built later in the 1970s, a 35mm steel case with an octagonal bezel, a dark blue waffle dial, and a date at three. The brand never comes clear on screen, the same look turns up on a Seiko of the period, and BAMF itself only ventures that it appears to be the Bulova, so the exact maker stays a careful guess. What is plain on Gallagher's wrist is the shape: a steel sports watch on an integrated bracelet, the silhouette everyone in 1981 read as a Royal Oak.