Kick-Ass 2, much like its predecessor, is ostensibly about young crime-fighters who save themselves by saving others. At its core is the familiar tale of many great comic-book heroes, from Spider-Man to the X-Men: outcasts who discover their true power and become defenders of the disenfranchised, fighting for those who can't fight for themselves. Except in the world of Kick-Ass, the relentless emphasis on hyper-"real" hyper-violence can be so overpowering, the people in the audience often feel like the ones who need saving.

Luckily, there's Hit-Girl.

But more on her later. First the basics. Kick-Ass 2, out Friday, is director Jeff Wadlow's follow-up to the 2010's film about a young vigilante named Dave (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who transforms himself into the spandexed hero called Kick-Ass and brings down a crime boss–who, unbeknownst to him, just happened to be the father of fellow aspiring hero Chris D'Amico/Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). The sequel picks up where that film left off—albeit a few years later—as Dave tries to recruit his former accomplice Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) to become the Robin to his Batman. (Her deadpan response? "Robin wishes he was me.")

(Spoiler alert: Minor spoilers for Kick-Ass 2 to follow.)

Much like Chris, Hit-Girl lost her father—the slightly insane Big Daddy (played in the first movie by Nicolas Cage)—and has since been adopted by Big Daddy's former partner, Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut). But while Mindy's loss inspires her to save others, it turns Chris into a sociopath, and the differences between the two inspire both the movie's most disturbing issues and its only redeeming quality. Because while Chris—who's has rebranded himself as The Motherfucker–says terribly off-color, racist things, and does terrible things to women, Hit-Girl's vendetta against bullying and harassment of all stripes provides the saving grace of the movie. (Mostly.)

On the surface, it’s not too surprising that Kick-Ass 2 is a fairly violent romp full of sexist, racist, and homophobic jokes. Like it's predecessor, that's weirdly part of its charm. It's a movie full of gruesome guilty pleasures meant to poke fun at the too-safe world of comic book heroism – but the pleasure starts to fade when the guilt sets in. The film’s hyperviolent and offensive excesses seem determined to show you just how horrible the villains are – to make the evil people seem even more evil. Yet instead of focusing on how far it needs to go to establish this, Wadlow's movie seems focused on how far it can go. The more gratuitous and excessive something is, the more significant, right? But simply turning up the volume doesn't make something more meaningful and when the thrill is gone that ringing in your ears sounds like "I shouldn't be enjoying this."

Kick-Ass 2 might be a more enjoyable film if it somehow existed in a vacuum, where exploiting the ugly and horrific things that happen to real people for cinematic shock value had neither context nor consequence. Unfortunately, Kick-Ass 2 doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in the real world, where Mark Millar, the co-creator of the original Kick-Ass comics, recently said "The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know? ... I don't really think it matters. It's the same as, like, a decapitation. It's just a horrible act to show that somebody's a bad guy." While the disturbing rape scene that appeared the Kick-Ass 2 comic gets reduced to a scene where a woman is merely badly beaten and threatened with sexual assault (to establish how bad the bad guys are, remember?) it still feels exploitative, no matter what kind of comeuppance the assailant may get.

The same lack of vacuum applies to the film's co-star Jim Carrey, who plays a reformed mobster vigilante named Colonel Stars and Stripes. In real life, Carrey recently announced on Twitter he wouldn't be promoting such a violent movie in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. His reaction may seem extreme—and many of his co-stars have chimed in to disagree with his stance—but his point is interesting considering who he plays in the film.

Stars and Stripes leads the self-styled-hero posse Justice Forever, which Kick-Ass joins after Hit-Girl hangs up her purple wig. In one of the film's best moments, the crew (which includes several female heroes) rescues a group of women forced into prostitution and hands the rescued women a bag of money procured from their boss. But the wind gets sucked out of it when, no more than five minutes later, there's a largely unnecessary shot of Chris in a pool with two topless women. The shift from portraying women as kickass crime-fighters to treating them as little more than naked set decoration is enough to give you whiplash. And for a movie that supposed to celebrate defending the disenfranchised, it's more than a little bit of a mixed message. It's fine and even necessary to demonstrate that a villain–in this case The Motherfucker–needs to be taken down because of his deplorable deeds, but here it feels indulgent and exploitative–like Kick-Ass 2 looks like it enjoys showing us the violence and misogyny of its evildoers just a little too much.

But again, at least there's Hit-Girl, who at least manages to inject heart, soul, and something of a slightly skewed moral compass into the fray. Her status as the film's sole bright spot seems less surprising after the recent news that her storyline got an uncredited rewrite to–in Moretz's words–make the character less "male-centered." It would be interesting to see what exactly those rewrites were, because for all of the general toughness and empowerment she exhibits through her choices, her most exquisite moments come in the things she says, not does. For example, when a group of hooligans is beating up Dave and calling him "faggot," Hit-Girl swoops in to fight them off, but starts her salvo by saying, "You know, all that homophobic shit makes you sound super gay." Relatedly, when one of the mean girls says, "maybe she's a dyke," she responds with "maybe I'll jam my foot up your snatch." It's fighting ugliness with ugliness, but at least she's confronting the offensive B.S. In the potty-mouth world of Kick-Ass, that's about as sensitive as it gets. (It also seems especially poignant coming from Moretz–a marriage-equality advocate prone to calling out homophobic remarks on her Instagram feed. Again, nothing exists in a vacuum.)

Of course, a few quips don't entirely negate a film filled with ultra-violence and off-color commentary, and her existence doesn't excuse everything in the film, but it does take something that would otherwise be painful to watch and give it something of a conscience. (She gets a little help here from Insect Man, Justice Forever's gay hero, and Dr. Gravity, the crew's African-American one, but not a lot.) From defending Dave to taking on high school bullies, to her final showdown with the Motherfucker's Toxic Mega Cunts (yup), she's the one to root for. And she's as endearing as she is empowering. In Kick-Ass, she seemed more like a cold-hearted killer, by Kick-Ass 2 she's the warm-hearted savior – and a much-needed one at that.

While it's easy to dismiss Kick-Ass 2 as a less-than-serious movie undeserving of serious thought (or serious criticism) it has no problem playing with some very serious stuff for entertainment and shock value, and given the commentary from Kick-Ass creator Millar that the first film was "all about the consequences of violence"–not about trying to escape them–it's hard not to consider it on those terms. Kick-Ass 2 and its predecessor have always been about kids playing in an adult world. If that's the conceit, and their purpose is to show the true consequences of their actions, then they need to put on their big-kid spandex and act like it. Big colorful bloody battles can be a hell of a good time, but if you want to call yourself a hero, you've gotta know what you're fighting for, and in Kick-Ass 2 the youngest of the bunch is the only one who seems to know what that is.