Robert Redford wears a Seiko SKX009

Robert Redford says almost nothing in All Is Lost. J.C. Chandor gave him fewer than fifty words of dialogue across the entire film. He plays a solo sailor, credited only as Our Man, whose yacht collides with a shipping container in the Indian Ocean. The rest is survival. The Seiko SKX on his wrist is the right watch for the situation: an automatic diver, 200 meters of water resistance, no battery to die, readable in darkness. It's the watch a competent sailor would actually own.

The SKX series is arguably the most popular affordable dive watch ever made. Seiko produced them from the mid-1990s until 2019, and they became the default recommendation for anyone who wanted a mechanical diver under $250. On a character who has no name and no backstory, the SKX tells you what little the film is willing to share: this is a man who knows what he's doing on the water, and he equipped himself accordingly.

There's no status to signal when you're alone on a sinking boat. The SKX is the cheapest dive watch you could put on this character, and it's for the film where the ocean is actually trying to kill him.