If you must see only 1 Christian Bale film from this (or last) year, this is it

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2014)

7.2 of 10. What amounts to a mystery with politics and big business woven into the normal crime and police angles. Even a touch of the much lesser used mafia elements that once seemed forced into any crime film.
Besides benefiting from being based on reality and not simply being a story pulled out of the imagination, it also provides an unusual mix of low-lifes and high powered FBI officials intermingling and trying to hustle one another in addition to the more powerful and wealthy.
It's something like a story focused on the middle class of crime and punishment instead of the top and bottom.
For style, in addition to cars, hair spray, and bra-less clothing, it provides an excellent mix of 1970s music to help set the mood and time, much more so than this year's other 1970s film, Rush. In terms of the films getting released with Oscar hype, only AH seems in the same league as Dallas Buyers Club and The Activist, though other award-deserving films include Closed Circuit, Elysium, The Great Gatsby, Warm Bodies, We Are What We Are, and Best Offer.