Well, as long as you don't make the usually-fatal mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight, I suppose it could be useful.

Like HF said, any sort of weaponry can be effective in certain circumstances. As well as ineffective in others. It is true that a skilled knife thrower can kill a man. Although, being an aficionado of the sport, I have noticed that in Hollywood the knife throwing sequences are usually bullshit. They get the physics and the mechanics all wrong.

Usually their mistake is that in reality, the knife that is thrown would not have the sufficient mass and velocity to lethally penetrate the body of the target person. A common example of this is like when some little girl in the movie who is supposed to be a bad-ass, like that Dragon Tattoo twit, throws a backhand little three-inch blade, 8 oz knife and it goes like thirty feet and sticks to the hilt in a guy's chest.

Bullshit! She never imparts enough velocity on the thing, usually not enough to even stick in a Sheetrock wall.

I took some knife throwing lessons a couple years ago from a guy who is actually a custodian at my college. I got to the point where I could stick throw it and have it sticks in a rubber target manquin from about twenty feet. Maybe about seven out of ten times. But thanks for reminding me! I'm currently down here in Costa Rica on a field trip, and I brought my 6" Schrade Bowie Knife with me. It has pretty good balance. I think I'm gonna go find me a rubber tree and do some practice!

LOL

SS

I think any skill you learn in neutralizing an opponent is useful.

No, not really. A lot of the time, the knife will hit the target harmlessly with the handle, if it hits the target at all, which is not very useful and means you've just thrown away a sharp weapon which is now by the enemy you are trying to beat. Even if your opponent was polite enough to stand there, not moving, while you took aim, focused, and then threw, there's only a small chance that it would connect with the blade. And even if it did, it would have to connect with skin, otherwise it wouldn't really do much unless you have a very hard through and it hits with the point.But really, the best thing is to not throw your knife, and rather just walk and stab him in a bunch of times in the chest. Yes, it might work as a distraction, but so would throwing a chair or glass, or anything else that would probably do more damage without sacrificing a weapon to the enemy.