Peter Weller wears an unidentified watch

1989 was the year Hollywood went to the bottom of the ocean three times. The Abyss, DeepStar Six, and Leviathan all sent crews down to undersea stations to meet something terrible, and Leviathan borrowed most openly from Alien: a deep-sea mining outfit, a Soviet genetic experiment loose in the corridors, and Peter Weller, two years off RoboCop, as the closest thing the film has to Ripley. George P. Cosmatos directed it from a script by David Webb Peoples and Jeb Stuart. Weller plays Steven Beck, the geologist running the deep-sea mining crew.

There is a watch on Beck's wrist, and in one tight shot, his hand flat against his chest, you get a good look at it. It is a chunky black sports chronograph, a busy dial with a bright red central hand sweeping over it, the kind of multi-register tool watch a working man at depth would actually strap on. What you cannot get off that dial is a name. No brand resolves at any magnification, and the watch-spotting community has never agreed on one either; the guesses run from a Timex to a Haverhills Navigator, with the people making them talking each other out of it. What is left is the honest description: a sports chronograph, plainly worn at depth, that nobody has been able to put a brand to.