MovieChat Forums > Fargo (1996) Discussion > Why does it take so long for the killers...

Why does it take so long for the killers to drive to Minneapolis?

posted 7 years ago by g24601
1 reply | jump to latest

Jerry meets Carl and Grimsrud in Fargo, ND to set up the fake kidnapping. Jerry lives and works in Minneapolis which is only a 3½ to 4 hour drive from Fargo. Even accounting for the snow and ice and slower driving conditions they should have got there in less than half a day. But in the movie they stay overnight in a hotel and the "pancakes house" dialogue indicates they've been driving the entire day before stopping there. I probably missed where they came from but if they didn't start out in Fargo, where were they driving from?

[–] franzkabuki 7 years ago

Geography/passage of time in this movie is indeed a source of great mystery. Consider this: Carl & Gaer snatch Jean from her home at what seems to be around noon time. Then the next time we see them, when the highway murders are committed, it's suddenly in the middle of the night. And when they finally arrive at the cabin by the lake, it's morning and light outside again - even though the cabin is supposedly even nearer to Minneapolis than Fargo. It's also not very probable they made any lengthy stopovers along the way because of their volatile cargo which they surely must have wanted to stash out of sight asap. So, yes, it's strange (and this strangeness is further confirmed towards the end of the movie when Carl meets Jerry's father-in-law in Minneapolis at around 8 p.m. if memory serves and yet only arrives back at the cabin the next morning, apparently more than 12 hours later). Considering how meticulous the Coens typically are, it's unthinkable they never noticed this anomaly - so I guess it must go down as a sizeable deal of poetic licence taken.

"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan