Samuel L. Jackson wears a Rolex Oyster Perpetual

Trevor Garfield gets stabbed by a student in Brooklyn, recovers, moves to Los Angeles, and takes a substitute teaching job in a school at least as dangerous as the one that nearly killed him. Samuel L. Jackson plays him in Kevin Reynolds's One Eight Seven (1997) as a man the system has already broken, working out whether to keep playing by its rules or break them back. The title is California Penal Code Section 187, the section that defines murder.

The watch on his wrist looks like a Rolex Oyster Perpetual. It is not one. The production built it to resemble a Rolex, dial and all, then fitted it to a faux alligator strap. When it surfaced years later out of the Planet Hollywood collection, the auction listing put it plainly: a watch designed and branded by the production to look like a Rolex, now nonfunctional, the back still marked where it had been secured to a costume.

Which is the joke the movie tells without meaning to. The thing is worthless, and the story treats it as worth fighting over. A student named César steals it off Garfield. The principal will not act, afraid of a lawsuit. So Garfield gets the combination to César's locker, takes the watch back, and offers the boy a fresh start, which the boy refuses. A fake Rolex, stolen and recovered as if it were real. The smallest object in the film is the one nobody can leave alone.