Xie Miao gives protective characters feeling through demanding physical action, often with little dialogue. We recommend The Furious for his commitment and its inventive fighting, though the thin script gives him little help.
Fi1m perspective
Xie Miao is worth watching when a fight has room to develop. In The Furious (2026), Kenji Tanigaki lets him and Joe Taslim work through inventive, punishing bouts without making the action difficult to follow. We were exhilarated by the fighting, because its clarity lets us register the effort as well as the cleverness. The kidnapping story gives them a reason to join forces, but the writing is thin and the dialogue awkward; we recommend it with those limitations plainly in view.
The father-and-son pairings with Jet Li in The New Legend of Shaolin (1994) and My Father Is a Hero (1995) belong to his child-actor years. His adult career developed through mainland action and wuxia productions. Eye for an Eye (2022) gave him the recurring role of blind swordsman Cheng Xiazi, continued in a sequel. The protective roles in his recent work put him on the other side of that early arrangement, with someone else depending on his strength.
His recent performances often let action carry emotion with minimal dialogue. His collaboration on fight choreography involves grappling, improvisation and taking on multiple opponents, all of which require more than hitting a mark and looking stern. The preparation for The Furious involved about a month of training, six days a week, morning and afternoon. Tanigaki’s clear staging lets us see the result, and the extended fights hold our attention because their demands remain visible: the film gives us time to follow what the performers are doing.
The reservation is about what happens between those fights. The Furious supplies a kidnapping and a trafficking network, but its pauses can feel like waiting for the talking to finish. We would not use such thin writing to settle what Xie can do beyond action. We would welcome a script that gives him more to work with, particularly in those protective roles where physical skill has someone to serve. Start with The Furious, provided the fighting matters more to you than the conversations.
Biography
Xie Miao is a Chinese actor and martial artist. Born in Beijing on 2 May 1984, he began his career as a child actor and won several wushu tournament titles. He rose to prominence starring opposite Jet Li in The New Legend of Shaolin (1994) and My Father Is a Hero (1995), and also appeared in God of Gamblers Returns (1994).
After graduating from the Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, he resumed acting with television roles such as in Legend of Shaolin Temple (2007) and films including The Thousand Faces of Dunjia (2017) and Ip Man: The Awakening (2021). He is known for the Eye for an Eye series as Cheng Xiazi and plays Wang Wei in The Furious (2025).
