The second "Die Hard" was treated as mainly a cash-grab by critics, viewers, and the filmmakers themselves ("How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?" asks returning hero John McClane), but its dynamic and often unconventional approach to filming action was singled out for compliments. Roger Ebert praised one of the many convincing depictions of a plane exploding (actually a scale model) as well as a moment when McClane ejects from the cockpit of another plane just before grenades detonate and destroy it: we see a high-angled shot of the hero being propelled into the air, his face yelling at the camera in closeup before he rotates away and begins his descent. "Not only is this shot sensationally effective in terms of the story," Ebert wrote, "but as a visual, it is exhilarating; I love it when a director finds a new way to show me something."
From that point on, Wood alternated the blood-and-gunpowder spectaculars that were increasingly his mainstay (“Terminal Velocity,” “2 Days in the Valley,” “Face/Off,” “U-571,” “Two Guns” and “The Equalizer 2”) with the likes of “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit,” and “Step Brothers.”
For better or worse (depending on the moviegoer), Wood is most strongly associated with his work as director of photography on the first three Jason Bourne adventures (“The Bourne Identity,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” and “The Bourne Ultimatum”). Fine-tuning a style that was already being used on certain TV dramas (notably "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "24"), the films were shot mostly handheld and with Steadicams (a body-mounted handheld camera), with quick-cut close-ups, whipsaw pans, and sudden zooms. At that time, the look was more likely to be showcased in sports broadcasts, or news coverage from combat zones. But seeing it in a James Bond-ish context captured something that was obviously coalescing in the zeitgeist (9/11 had happened a year earlier, and now TV news was full of footage from occupied Afghanistan). “Bourne-style” quickly became the default way to shoot action.
In a 2014 interview, cinematographer Robert Elswit talked about how the collaboration between Wood and the first Bourne film’s director, Doug Liman—as well as Paul Greengrass, who directed the sequels—“changed everything” in action cinema. “They made it so you couldn’t make a James Bond movie. All of a sudden, you have a strange, European reality to a sort of a nervous, anxious camera.”
You can see Wood’s impact in everything from the “Taken” and “Crank” films to the science-fiction war movie "Battle Los Angeles" to Marvel and DC live-action superhero movies and the first couple of Daniel Craig-era James Bond films, which aimed for Bourne-ish grittiness (the action scenes in "Quantum of Solace" were even directed by Dan Bradley, second unit director on the Bourne franchise).
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