Samuel L. Jackson wears a Casio Alarm Chronograph

Zeus Carver does not want to be in this movie. Samuel L. Jackson plays him as a Harlem shop owner who pulls John McClane out of a bad situation in the wrong neighborhood and spends the rest of the film regretting it. John McTiernan came back to direct Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) after sitting out the second one, and you can feel the difference. Jeremy Irons plays Simon, the brother of the first film's Hans Gruber, running McClane and Zeus through riddles across New York while his crew quietly empties the Federal Reserve.

Zeus wears a Casio, a round-faced alarm chronograph on a brown leather strap, the kind of watch a man buys once and then forgets he is wearing. A costume archive lists every piece of his outfit, and reading it shows how deliberate the ordinariness was: snagged and soiled trousers, suede gloves with the middle fingers taped, a bloodied towel still tagged with its scene number, all built by the costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi to look lived-in. The watch belongs to that world. It is not a hero's watch. It is what a guy who fixes things in Harlem would actually have on when a bomber decides to ruin his afternoon.