The writer and director, Jeff Wadlow, can’t obscure the movie’s misogyny, and he also has a tough time staging a scene and selling a joke. His worst offense is that he has no understanding of the power, gravity and terrible beauty of violent imagery, which means he has no grasp of cinema. When Hit Girl, a k a Mindy, kills a thief, it’s with the glazed indifference that lets you know that nothing matters, not the man bleeding out at her feet, not Dave’s fleeting shock and certainly not her humanity. The moment is empty, and so is she. Even so, you may still shiver in repugnance at the scene in which a number of New York cops are slaughtered for giggles. You may also wonder who at Universal signed off on a flick in which human beings are as disposable as tissues, and teenagers shoot to kill.

Like the first movie, the sequel tries to use extremes, including caricatures, to generate woozy comedy. And the image of the tiny Ms. Moretz executing flips and villains in the first movie did give it an uncomfortably comic bite, as did Mindy’s slavish devotion to her psychotic father, a self-styled superhero called Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage). He’s gone now, as is the modest frisson generated by his relationship with Hit Girl. Now Mindy is just another kid with only one real friend, no real parenting, problems at school, a carefully nurtured secret life and a roomful of lethal weapons. In other words, while she’s still a fictional character and a moderately cartoonish one at that, she’s also a heroic stand-in for every teenager who picks up a gun and starts shooting.

“Kick-Ass 2” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Extreme violence.