The movie Bonds weren’t very much like the literary Bond at all.
Fleming always said that he deliberately chose the name “James Bond” (he saw it on his copy of Birds of the West Indies) for its very dullness and drabness. His character Bond wasn;'t supposed to be – well – a character. Like any good agent, he was supposed to be invisible most of the time, and was supposed to be pretty much an interchangeable cog in the machine. He also knows that he’s in a high-risk profession, and that his chances of living a long life aren’t great, so he doesn, but spends his money on his car, good food, high living, and gambling. Bond is also a gambler and depends on luck, as did Fleming, so Fleming left that as a personality trait.
Bond does get bogged down in paperwork and drill. In the novel **Goldfinger[/.B], after Goldfinger spares him, he is set to work doing office work (!) for the upcoming “Hood’s convention”. It’s not surprising they changed this for the film – watching Sean Connery making copies would be a killer. This was a more important change than NOT having Goldfinger rob Fort Knox. At least when he finally got to The Man with the Golden Gun, Fleming realized how ludicrous this was, and had Bond get close to Scaramanga by throwing in as his bodyguard.
Bond was also, as noted above, pretty humorless in the books. After I showed a friend the original 1954 TV version of Casino Royale, he pointed out that Barry Nelson spouts wisecracks as Bond, and is the very first manifestation of the “witty” Bond, who later re-appeared in the films. Literary Bond could be a colorless fellow, but apparently for the audience to sympathize with a guy who was a ruthless spy and executioner, he also had to have some leavening in the form of one-liners.