Tom Cruise wears a TAG Heuer S/el

There is a watch in Jerry Maguire (1996) that tells you the year before it tells you the time. It is a TAG Heuer S/el, a quartz chronograph with a white dial crowded by three little sub-registers, a date jammed in at 4:30, the logo in color, and lugs that curve out from the case in big dramatic sweeps. Subtle was not the assignment. Cameron Crowe directed the film, and the whole thing is soaked in its decade, the music, the clothes, and the watches. No brand said 1990s quite like TAG Heuer, and in Jerry Maguire it feels as if everyone is wearing one.

The watch gets its moment at the hinge of the movie. Jerry Maguire is a sports agent who writes a memo about caring more and selling less, gets fired for it in a single brutal day, and walks out with one employee and one client. In the scene where it all comes apart, Tom Cruise raises his hand to his face in an empty office, and the loud TAG is right there on his wrist. Seconds later he is on the phone with that one client, the football player Rod Tidwell, who makes him shout the line that outlived the film, "Show me the money!"

It is a period-perfect costume choice. The S/el was loud and overdesigned in exactly the register the film was going for, and it was not alone on set. Going through the cast, Hodinkee found TAG Heuers everywhere: Rod Tidwell on a two-tone Professional 200, Dorothy Boyd on a stainless Professional Quartz.