Sandra Bullock wears an unidentified watch

Of all the watches in The Lost City, the one that matters is the fake. Loretta Sage, the burned-out romance novelist Sandra Bullock plays, gets kidnapped by a billionaire who is convinced her latest book hides the way to a real lost treasure. Her would-be rescuers, the cover model Alan and a mercenary named Jack Trainer, find her by following the GPS signal from the smartwatch still strapped to her wrist.

You can see it in the scene where she finally reaches a payphone in a tropical village, sweat-soaked and still trapped in the purple sequined jumpsuit she has worn since the kidnapping. On her wrist is a round smartwatch with a gold bezel and a dark glass face. Its screen is not from any real device. The motion designer Nate Carlson created and animated the watch's display as an original design for the film, so the interface that lights up on it belongs to no product you could buy.

That makes it unidentifiable in the most literal way. There is no brand to read and no model to look up, just a prop built to behave like a smartwatch and to show whatever the story needs, including the location that leads the rescue to her. In a movie about a writer chasing a treasure that might be invented, a watch with an invented face fits right in.