I was fascinated until... (spoilers)
The story used contrived plot points that ruined it for me:
- Avery calls for backup after Luke's home invasion, but then he doesn't wait for them. He goes in alone and gets in a shootout with Luke. That's bad police procedure and he should have been reprimanded, even though he was called a hero cop.
- The corrupt cops (Ray Liotta et al) show up at Avery's house's while he's still on the mend from the shootout. They drag him away and go to Romina's house and barge in for an illegal search, no warrant. She or Kofi should have refused them entry, and reported them. Instead they're cowed into letting them in, and the cops conveniently find the money Luke gave Romina, hidden in the baby's crib.
- Avery gets most of the money from the search, but he feels guilty over it. He turns it over to the police chief and unartfully tries to wangle a promotion from it. Failing that, he uses a wire to entrap one of the corrupt cops, turns that over to the DA and pressures him for a promotion to ADA. The corrupt cops are taken down.
All of that could have been handled more skillfully. Instead, to me, the story went south after that.
The segue into 15 years later made it worse. Avery is successful, running for Attorney General, but he has split from his wife and his son, AJ, has huge issues. No explanation. AJ, after moving in with Avery, makes a clumsy introduction to Jason, who happens to be Luke's son, unbeknownst to Jason. AJ gets Jason to score drugs, which leads to their arrest. After they're released he does it again. All of this leads to Jason finding out who is father really is, a bad-ass motorcycle rider turned bank robber. That whole sequence, leading up to Jason buying a motorcycle and riding off into whatever future, in an allusion to his wanting to emulate his bad ass father in some way, was IMO, handled poorly. I stuck it out to the end anyway, though the story never improved.
Not that it didn't have some positives: Ryan Gosling's acting and his bank robbing henchman were perfect. And everything up until the botched robbery had me hooked. I wanted more. Then it all went wrong for reasons stated above.