You can almost hear the pitch for Cardboard Boxer right there in the title: “He’s homeless, and he boxes! He’s a cardboard boxer!” The first trailer for the tearjerker indie drama isn’t much more nuanced than that—Thomas Haden Church stars as the titular cardboard boxer who splits his time between fighting other underprivileged people for the entertainment of rich teenagers and writing to a little girl whose diary he found.
But the film’s lineup is a lot more promising than its premise, with a cast is rounded out by Terrence Howard, Boyd Holbrook, Rhys Wakefield, and musician Macy Gray. Cardboard Boxer marks the directorial debut of Jackass producer Knate Lee, who also wrote the script.
