With Pierce Brosnan on the cover holding a gun and flames in the background, the marketing department over at Miramax should be fired. The Matador is not an action movie. In fact, no one is ever killed on screen, and it's a movie about a hitman.
That's setting up a lot of people who are going to pick this up thinking it's in the vein of the James Bond movies. It's not. It's targeted for specific audiences who have an off, dry sense of humor. This dark comedy isn't a mass release.
It's a superbly acted concept, with Brosnan being praised universally as a hitman who continues to spiral downward when he meets an average businessman (Greg Kinnear). The final 30-minutes or so of the film are superb as the killer needs a place to stay. Some of the dialogue exchanges here are priceless.
There are those flashes of comedy brilliance before that, but most of the film constantly reminds the audience Brosnan's character is a sex freak, loves to drink, and has a problem saying anything with more than four letters. His character is set in the opening moments, and the revelation of Kinnear's character doesn't come until the seconds leading up to the closing credits.
Granted, that's a superb finale, quietly wrapping up the plot in the proper way. It's still a hard sell to believe anyone would stick around long enough to end up in Kinnear's situation. It involves some wild leaps of faith to keep going.
The Matador is a hard sell to a mainstream audience, and if Miramax saw fit to try and branch it out to give it a shot that's fine. Unfortunately, there's a right and wrong way to do this. This comedy is tailored to a niche audience, and even then it's only mildly successful. 
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