A story about a teenager who yearns to be a superhero, and a little girl who’s the star of her own splatter-happy head trip, the big-screen comic “Kick-Ass” could not be more calculating, or cynical. Fast, periodically spit-funny and often grotesquely violent, the film at once embraces and satirizes contemporary action-film clichés with Tarantino-esque self-regard — it’s the latest in giggles-and-guts entertainment.

The filmmaking isn’t in the same league, of course, and the blonde doing the slicing and dicing here isn’t Uma Thurman but Chloë Grace Moretz, who was 11 when she slipped into her purple wig and killer affect. (She’s now 13.) Her casting has set off alarms about the uses and abuses of child performers, though perhaps less for the violence she pantomimes than for the expletives she blithely delivers. Ms. Moretz plays Mindy Macready, a cutie-pie with blond pigtails, who regularly enters into avenger mode as Hit-Girl. With Nicolas Cage, who plays Mindy’s father, Damon, a k a Big Daddy, Ms. Moretz is by far the best thing about the film: she holds the screen as gracefully as she executes a running back flip.

It’s a good thing, too, because without those monkey moves, Ms. Moretz’s queasy charm and Mr. Cage’s patented freak-show turn, “Kick-Ass” would quickly fade. It meanders to a start when Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a high school dweeb with superhero dreams, buys a green-and-yellow wet suit and takes to the streets as the masked crusader of the film’s title. He soon finds plenty of trouble and instantaneous Internet fame, going on to attract the attention of Hit-Girl and Big Daddy as well as that of Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), a supervillain with a couple of Warhols and a teenager (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Eventually, these parts flashily come together for the usual bang, gurgle and splurt.

The man behind this bang-bang is Matthew Vaughn, a British producer of Guy Ritchie crime films who, with “Layer Cake,” became a director of Guy Ritchie-style crime films. Mr. Vaughn wrote the screenplay for his new movie with Jane Goldman, adapting it from the comic illustrated by John Romita Jr. and written by Mark Millar. Mr. Millar also wrote the comic “Wanted,” which was turned into a similarly hyperviolent Angelina Jolie vehicle directed by Timur Bekmambetov. “Kick-Ass” has a far brighter palette than “Wanted,” but the body count and certainly its what-me-worry attitude toward bloodletting is comparable. In “Wanted,” slo-mo bullets tear through flesh, allowing you to admire the special-effects handiwork; here, a goodfella pops a guy in a giant microwave and asks about the setting. Bada-boom!

Much as he does elsewhere in the film, Mr. Vaughn delivers that bit of nasty with a light touch, cutting from the scene right after the microwaved man, or rather his viscera, splats on the glass. (Who wants to look at that mess, right?) And so the movie keeps zip-zipping self-consciously — faster, Hit-Girl, kill, kill! — as the plot somewhat thickens. Damon turns out to have enlisted his daughter for some twisted payback, a development that, partly because of Mr. Cage and Ms. Moretz’s chemistry, proves more diverting than Dave’s adolescent delusions. Tucked inside this flick is a relationship as kinky and potentially resonant as that between Lolita and Humbert Humbert, but you’d need a better director to pry it out.

Mr. Vaughn instead just skates along, tossing in comic-book lettering and recycled action ideas and moves, including some that Quentin Tarantino exploited in the “Kill Bill” films after siphoning them off from the likes of Kinji Fukasaku. When Mindy shows up in a plaid kilt, knee-highs and a white shirt sure to bleed red, she isn’t only a joke about to detonate, she’s also a copy of a copy, except that the killer schoolgirl who rampaged through Mr. Fukasaku’s “Battle Royale” and then “Kill Bill” is now a prepubescent. That Ms. Moretz is a child complicates things partly because it raises the issue of agency or maybe lack thereof. And oh yeah: as it happens, it’s really unpleasant to watch as a child is even stage-punched.

There’s something about the killer schoolgirl that turns some filmmakers on, and audiences, too — who knows what further dangers lurk beneath that kilt? However chastely, Mr. Vaughn plays on that unsettling image, which shores up the false impression that because Hit-Girl is a powerful figure she’s also an empowering one.

Ms. Moretz certainly walks the walk and jumps the jump, loading a new gun in midrun like a baby Terminator. But as her deployment of a four-letter slur for women indicates, and as the cop-out last blowout only underscores, Hit-Girl isn’t a wee Wonder Woman. She’s not even a latter-day Lara Croft, who, however absurd, works on screen because of Ms. Jolie’s own outsize persona. A supergimmick, Hit-Girl by contrast is a heroine for these movie times: a vision of female might whittled down to pocketsize.

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

Kick-Ass

Opens on Friday nationwide. Directed by Matthew Vaughn; written by Jane Goldman and Mr. Vaughn, based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.; director of photography, Ben Davis; edited by Jon Harris, Pietro Scalia and Eddie Hamilton; music by John Murphy, Henry Jackman, Marius De Vries and Ilan Eshkeri; production designer, Russell De Rozario; costumes by Sammy Sheldon; produced by Mr. Vaughn, Brad Pitt, Kris Thykier, Adam Bohling, Tarquin Pack and David Reid; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes.

WITH: Aaron Johnson (Dave Lizewski/ Kick-Ass), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris D’Amico/Red Mist), Mark Strong (Frank D’Amico), Chloë Grace Moretz (Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl), Omari Hardwick (Sgt.Marcus Williams), Xander Berkeley (Detective Gigante), Michael Rispoli (Big Joe) and Nicolas Cage (Damon Macready/Big Daddy).