Robert De Niro wears a Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox

Giovanni Manzoni informed on his entire crime family and got relocated to Normandy under witness protection, where he is supposed to be Fred Blake, a quiet American writer. Robert De Niro plays him in Luc Besson's The Family as a man who cannot stop being who he is, beating up a plumber who overcharges him and writing a tell-all memoir about his mob days while Tommy Lee Jones, as his FBI handler, tries to keep the family from getting killed. It is a comedy, but De Niro plays the violence straight.

On his wrist is a Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox, the alarm watch JLC introduced in 1950 and made automatic in 1956, the first self-winding watch with a built-in mechanical alarm. A second crown sets the time, and a small hammer buzzes against the caseback to wake the wearer or remind him of an appointment. The one in the film is a vintage example, and the Memovox has form in this kind of movie: Steve McQueen wore one in The Thomas Crown Affair.

The watch is not just set dressing. In one of the family's schemes they use it as a timer, which is a neat job for a watch built to go off at a chosen moment.