Read more: Mad Max - Fury Road: Cut to the chase
More praise came from Hitfix, who called it a "stone-cold action master class," and Variety, which said: "'Worth the wait' still seems a puny response to the two hours of ferocious, unfettered B-movie bliss".
Associated Press called it "an exceptional, fearless and poetic masterpiece that's primed to become a modern classic".
In a five-star review, Time Out's David Ehrlich said the films was like watching "a tornado tearing through a tea party".
"Fury Road steers this macho franchise in a brilliant new direction, forging a mythical portrait about the need for female rule in a world where men need to be saved from themselves."
Perhaps the highest praise came from Movies.com's reviewer, who said Fury Road was "one of the best action movies ever made".
It's high praise for a film that launches in a year full of high-octane sequels, from Fast & Furious 7 to Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Hardy, who is attached for three more Mad Max films, has already talked up suggestions of a sequel, telling THR: "I have no shadow of doubt in my mind that we'll be going on again with this."
"It's a crazy sort of surreal and heightened world within George's head, which is fully transmuted and fleshed out now on a multi-million dollar level," Hardy told AP. "It's been sort of turbo-boosted. It's been blown into an ambitious orchestration of technicolor psychosis."
Miller says the long delay between Mad Max 3 and 4 didn't matter.
"This was a movie you couldn't kill with a stick," he says. "It just kept on wanting to be made and eventually it was."
- nzherald.co.nz with AP
