With Uma Thurman killing Bill and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson walking tall, society appears to have met its recommended yearly allowance of vigilante revenge sagas. While undeniably entertaining (who doesn’t enjoy a vicarious rampage from time to time?) these movies leave a certain nutritional void. Watching them is like feeding Ding Dongs to your soul. That said, let me be the first to confess a weakness for quality junk food.

“The Punisher,” based on Frank Miller’s moody Marvel comic, is just too tasty a Ding Dong to deny. Craven and campily brutal, it features a bizarre yet pleasing assortment of cartoonish villains and tortured heroes, wrapped in a tight, head-stomping storyline that never slows down to let you stew on how silly it all is.

Writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh, a proven action screenwriter (“Die Hard With a Vengeance”) making his helming debut, hews closer to the spirit of the original comic than a previous 1989 straight-to-video effort starring Dolph Lundgren. Mere days after going into retirement, FBI agent Frank Castle (Thomas Jane from “Deep Blue Sea”) sees his entire extended family — including wife (resurrected ’80s starlet Samantha Mathis) and young son — butchered by the henchmen of Howard Saint (John Travolta, in familiar sociopath mode), an odious Miami-based money-launderer seeking revenge for his own dead son. Poisoned by his rather horrible loss, Castle dons a scary-looking voodoo T-shirt, gets a black dye-job, restores a brawny Ford GTS and descends on Miami to even the score.

Holed up in a ratty studio apartment, Castle becomes a reluctant addition to a surrogate family comprised of his lovable loser neighbors: A paranoid video game addict with multiple face piercings, an overweight shut-in (John Pinette) and a lonely waitress (Rebecca Romijn-
Stamos) with a knack for collecting abusive boyfriends. Inevitably, it’s the hot waitress who makes the deepest inroads into Castle’s wounded psyche, though watching Romijn-Stamos (“X-Men”) try and fail to muster convincing tears almost capsizes the illusion.

Castle’s friends make for a nice out-valve of comedy relief, but the most winning scenes in “The Punisher” involve a pair of enemy hitmen sent to neutralize the troublesome widower. After the grim mass-murder in the beginning, these villains — a mute Russian giant and a devilish Johnny Cash-type — give the movie a needed sprinkling of comic book-style absurdity.

Jane flashes legitimate leading man chops in “The Punisher,” mixing the laconic cool of Steve McQueen with the beefy swagger of Bruce Willis. The truth is, he’s a very capable actor — capable enough to know how to underplay the role, which is exactly the sort of mild approach this gloating cupcake of a revenge fantasy needs.

‘The Punisher’
B-
Starring: Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Rating: R (pervasive violence, profanity, brief nudity)
Playing: Opens Friday at theaters Valleywide Running time: 124 minutes