Tom Hardy wears a Casio

Tom Hardy's Eames leans back in a folding chair in the team's warehouse, collar up, looking more at ease than a man planning a heist inside someone else's dream has any right to. On his left wrist, catching the light, is a gold watch: a small rectangular case with a dark dial on a finely linked gold bracelet, the dial about as wide as the band. What you cannot make out, no matter how close the frame gets, is whose watch it is.

Nobody has put a name to it. The watch crowd that combed the film when it opened never got past the obvious part, and the close-ups, tight as they are, never turn up a logo; even the movie-watch sites that try come back with the same non-answer: gold case, dark dial, model unknown. It is the kind of gold rectangular dress watch that dozens of houses once made, unfussy and anonymous, and that is where the trail ends.

Eames is the team's forger, the one who can walk into a dream wearing someone else's face. Cobb recruits him in Mombasa, where he is already well dressed and running a con, and once the job is underway he is the loosest figure in every room. He also gets one of the film's most quoted lines: in the first dream level, while Arthur tries to pick off an attacker with a rifle, Eames ambles up with a grenade launcher and tells him, you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling, then settles it with one shot.