Thomas Hayden Church plays Willie, a homeless man with a little missing in the head. Based on the title of the movie, the film was about Willie getting paid by some rich kids to fight other homeless people for their entertainment. The other star on the poster, Terrance Howard plays a man who was able to get himself off the streets and comes back to help those he left behind, trying to seek out these rich kids and stop them from exploiting the homeless.

The richness of the film comes from Church trying to keep his mind straight, and doing this after coming across the diary of a young burn victim writing about the experience. He finds comfort writing letter to her inside the diary.

Overall the film does a great job of making you look differently at the homeless. It get inside the mind of a man living on the streets, and it does not try to figure him out, just make him human.

However, the movie does clean up far too well, and somehow this takes away from completely getting under your skin about the situation.

It's a well driven vehicle for Church, especially with Howard riding shotgun, but it does not have the emotion needed for people to go out and see it.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Cardboard Boxer" (2016) kinda reminded me a bit of "Time Out of Mind" (2014) - similar themes and surroundings. "Cardboard Boxer" is not bad at all character study movie (a bit), but "Time" was better in this category, but it wasn't such emotional as "Boxer".

Although no awards will shine for acting in this movie, i liked the performances by Thomas Haden Church, Terrence Howard and Boyd Holbrook as Pinky - he could have stayed on screen longer. Directing was nice as well as script. This is well paced movie - at running time 1 h 25 min it doesn't drag.

Overall, "Cardboard Boxer" is a nice little movie which will unfortunately i'm afraid be overlooked by many. Although it doesn't have anything original or very well made, is not a bad movie overall for seeing it once.

This movie has a rating of only 6.4 while much worse movies get 7.0 or higher. Incredible. Is the audience that brainless, or do dirty producers hire Indian/Bangladesh companies to pump up their ratings, and decrease ratings of their competitors?

This movie is the real thing. Not some propaganda crap. It shows all the "glory" of war and veterans, life on the streets, crime, and the corruption of the government. It shows unpleasant stuff, things hidden from the media, so that ordinary people wouldn't see the reality.

For those who expect big explosions and car-races, this is not a movie for you. This one is much slower. But it grabs you. Because it's so real.