Two Oscar winners together acting terribly

Why? Why are they both acting so badly?

I watched this film only because I'm a big Brody fan since seeing Predators (I've seen The Pianist and Summer of Sam as well, but Predators really proved his range) and I have seen some very high quality work from Forest Whitaker. I had also seen the original and thought "Well, it can't be that bad?"

This was awful - constantly over-acted and they were playing their characters in a way to make it very obvious to the audience who to side with and what was probably going to happen. As soon as Whitaker said that he was a devote christian you knew "This guy is going to turn out to be psycho!" which is such a shallow way to build a character. He's christian = he's repressed = he's psycho.

I think Adrian was very bad - he tries to make ever scene dramatic, even when it realistically wouldn't be. A little subtlety could have saved this performance. But Whitaker takes the cake - every line it's like he's trying desperately to "act well" or "be scary".

These two actors both won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role - the highest honor for an actor in Hollywood, next to lifetime achievement award.

I blame the director 90% (the script was very bad, but salvageable) but surely the actors could have asked themselves at some stage "Maybe I'm not playing this well?"