DAF might have worked better with Lazenby in the role. Connery didn't seem to give a damn. As campy as the movie was, it might have even been a good start for Moore.
If Bond gets another reboot, some of the Flemming books deserve a redo, and that's one. (not to mention a YOLT without the ah.. plastic surgury). I'd actually like to see them done around the time period they should have taken place in.
Connery's movies have become this TOS like reputation where they are the gold standard and cannot be touched, but they have all kinds of problems, not even getting into the sexism of the time.
Fighting scenes: the sped up film looks kind of silly and it always did, I think. Even as a kid I was trying to figure out why they did that.
specifically about Connery movies:
Dr. No: There's really not much wrong with the movie. Pity that Qurrell got burned but it's in the book, IIRC.
FRWL: The Gypsy Camp scene is kind of pointless. Other than that, pretty damned great movie.
Goldfinger: Bond doesn't really do much. He plays some gin, plays some golf, gets captured and rapes an evil lesbian into straightness and goodness. Some people don't think the plot makes much sense, but there are Brosnan films that make less sense, all of them really. Just allow Bond to actually do some successful spying.
Thunderball: the underwater bits are slow. the dreamy soundtrack didn't help much. Sacrilege it may be, but NSNA actually did improve the pacing of Thunderball. Not the soundtrack. Side note: NSNA soundtrack is beyond awful. The main song isn't any worse than it's competitor, On An All Time Octopussy.. wait.. On an All Time High, but after that it's light-jazz muzak that ought to be playing in one of those bland restaurants of the era you WOULD not go into for a reminiscent dinner if you had a time machine and happened to be back then anyway.
YOLT: Just remove the bit about what Asian women taste like, the wedding and the uh plastic surgery and you get a great film. The aerial shot of the fight atop the freighter remains one of my favorite bits of movie-making in the Bond franchise.
DAF: not a fan of this film. If anyone tries to argue the 70's are as cool as the 60's, show them any random five minutes of this and then show them five minutes of From Russia. The 70's are not cool. I was a kid in them. I don't have the provenance of people older than me, but they sucked. Hair was big and later big and crunchy. Clothes looked weird, architecture sucked, and Bond films were about to go into a well orchestrated corkscrew jump down the drain, accompanied by slide whistle (but not yet.. wait a few years). I don't know if it could have been done better at the time, but Connery wasn't the right actor for the job, for once. It was good of him to come back anyway, and it's not like he didn't get paid well for it. Things to remove: Holly Fellatio, the moon buggy and Honda three-wheeler chase. I'm ambivalent about Wint and Kidd. I actually like the idea of a loving diabolically deadly gay assassin couple that know less about wine choice than Bond. More emphasis on how Teresa's death affected Bond would have been good as well instead of just being angry and wanting to kill Blofeld.
