Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#47585
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Sun Jiaolong works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sun Jiaolong appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sun. Hero Sanyuanli is the clearest case: a film rated 6.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, adventure, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with He Yijie, Xiang Hesheng, He Jia Nan and others, Sun Jiaolong helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Hero Sanyuanli (2025) as Hei Long · The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014) as Bro 3 · Fist to Fist (2026) as Master Jin
Career snapshot
Ranked #47585 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2014–2026
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.5
Hero Sanyuanli
Average Nutevio score
3.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Hero Sanyuanli
Most frequent director
Tsui Hark
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tsui Hark
Most common genre
Action
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 15m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.1
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
4.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Kung Fu Town, Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, The Taking of Tiger Mountain — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
4.3
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
4.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Kung Fu Town, Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, The Taking of Tiger Mountain.
Most productive era
2020s
10 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 4.84 films |
| Action | 6.31 film | 5.05 films |
| Thriller | 6.51 film | — |
| Crime | — | 0.01 film |
| Romance | — | 6.22 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2014The Taking of Tiger Mountain
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bro 3. 6.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Fist to Fist
The current state of the argument, as Master Jin.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
13 of 13 films
Directed by Unknown
as Hei Long
Directed by Unknown
Directed by He Yijie
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Master Jin
Fist to Fist (2026)
Performance score6.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Master Jin gives Sun Jiaolong a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Tomb Raiders: Secrets of Tianxing Tomb
Tomb Raiders: Secrets of Tianxing Tomb (2025)
Performance score6.5
Tomb Raiders: Secrets of Tianxing Tomb asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hei Long
Hero Sanyuanli (2025)
Performance score6.5
Hero Sanyuanli asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hei Long is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Dong Chang
THE CHI DRAGON SLASH (2024)
Performance score6.5
THE CHI DRAGON SLASH asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dong Chang is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Master Jin
Start here. Fist to Fist is the clearest statement of what Sun Jiaolong does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 6.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sun at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Shanghai Bund: The Righteous Way of the Wind and Cloud (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Fist to Fist — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
THE CHI DRAGON SLASH (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Shanghai Bund: The Righteous Way of the Wind and Cloud — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Tomb Raiders: Secrets of Tianxing Tomb (2025)
Same director as THE CHI DRAGON SLASH, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Hero Sanyuanli (2025)
Same director as Tomb Raiders: Secrets of Tianxing Tomb, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tsui Hark
Director
2 films together
Notably The Taking of Tiger Mountain
He Jia Nan
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan Legend
Xiang Hesheng
Director
1 film together
Notably Fantasy Magician
He Yijie
Director
1 film together
Notably Shanghai Bund: The Righteous Way of the Wind and Cloud
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tsui Hark
Director
2 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Taking of Tiger MountainXiang Hesheng
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fantasy MagicianHe Jia Nan
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mulan LegendHe Yijie
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shanghai Bund: The Righteous Way of the Wind and CloudSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Taking of Tiger Mountain
as Bro 3
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Yin Yang Painted Skin
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Taking of Tiger Mountain
as Bro 3
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fist to Fist
as Master Jin
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Fist to Fist
as Master Jin
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Sun Jiaolong has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Action Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in action, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
as Phantom Blade
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
as Phantom Blade
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Yin Yang Painted Skin
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
as Phantom Blade
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
as Phantom Blade
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
as Phantom Blade
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hero Sanyuanli
as Hei Long
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mulan Legend
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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