A nice slow start -- or a dramatic action scene?

I took the first two chapters of Led to the Slaughter to writer's group, for one last go around.  I figure the first two chapters are the most important chapters -- except maybe the last two chapters -- or...well who knows...

Anyway, the first chapter is beautifully written, if I do say so myself.  It has been worked on so much, refined so much, that it absolutely flows by now. 

But -- strangely -- I worried if it was too much of a good thing.

What happens when you rewrite so many times is that you add more and more refinements -- and in some ways, it can become too much of a good thing.  It can become "writerly" if you will. 

I'm going to pare it down slightly.  It works as it is, but I could cut a few of my beautiful descriptions and phrases and get the same effect.

The one member of the group who hadn't heard it before liked the second chapter much more, and wondered why I couldn't start there, with the main protagonist starting off on the wagon train west.

He thought the first chapter was "too dramatic."

So -- I totally get what he's saying, and it is something I've been struggling with ever since I came back to writing -- this seeming necessity to start with something "dramatic."  Every action TV show or movie starts this way nowadays -- and most books. 

I'm not saying I like it -- but it seems to be the modern method.

As it happens the first chapter of this book was always the first chapter of this book -- and wasn't inserted to add "drama" or action early in the book.  I feel like it belongs there.

But I understand his point, and in many ways wish that was how books were still being written.